The Silk Crossroads of the World

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The Silk Road has been connecting people for centuries, bridging spice traders with silk caravans long before backpackers every discovered its trails. It was here, in the most accidental fashion, that I met people from every corner of the world. I had come to Xinjiang, China to experience its unique and singularly Uyghur culture. Instead, it is the unexpected diversity that makes Kashgar the crossroads that it is.

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Yurts are cold. I had spent the better part of a starless night curled up in a small ball, alternately sweating under flea-infested camelhair blankets and freezing in the Karakoram mountain air. The sun had not disappeared until 11 p.m., so when I saw it rising at 4:45, I knew it was time to get up with the rest of the yaks.

“Did you see those two guys in black?” Kaelyn whispers to me in terror, secretly relishing the opportunity to show up her third-year journalism school classmates with an exclusive on al-Qaeda next fall.

I had not. Mercifully, I must have been asleep.

“I woke up for just a second and saw them talking with the owners. When I put my head up, they just ran out!” Not how I like to be roused, but then again, something strange was bound to happen up here.

We were on the shores of Karakul Lake, tucked underneath the giant Muztagh-Ata Mountain. A small desert oasis in western Xinjiang, China, Kashgar had served as our jump-off point a day earlier as we headed across the Karakoram Highway. Near the Kazakhstan border, we set up camp at the lake. Riding surly camels by day and eating hand-pulled noodles with our Kyrgyz hosts in the drafty yurt by night, none of this would have happened if I hadn’t tried to weasel the Chinese military.

Two days earlier, Kaelyn and I hired a cab to visit the lake on a day trip. A 400km trek there and back, our Han Chinese driver agreed to one yuan for every kilometer. It seemed like a good deal, and we were off by mid-morning.

Flying through a deep canyon straddled by snowy peaks and a gray river fueled by melting glaciers, our driver pushed the rusty Volkswagen Santana to suicidal speeds. Anything to pinch every jiao out of that 400 yuan. A sign screamed by the side of the road, only 50km to the lake.

“Xia che! Get out!” the driver shouted. It was the worldly wanderer’s worst nightmare: he had driven us to the middle of nowhere to steal our authentic $8 Xinjiang rugs and camel bone necklaces. “Passport check!” Yet I laughed inside…I didn’t bring our passports. Joke’s on you, my man.

He pointed to a shack on the road up ahead. A single guard slouched at a tollbooth, staring endlessly at the black and yellow gate that he spends all day pulling up and down. “Passport check!”

Ooh, about that…

So we headed home. It seems that the Chinese military finds nothing amusing about unidentifiable foreigners (UFos for short). Returning to Kashgar, our cabbie astonishingly asked for exactly the fair amount. Fortunately, his unprecedented sympathy to our plight, and our incessant complaining, knocked it down 50 yuan.

We sat that night at John’s Café, wiping our tears with Nutella pancakes. A local Uyghur girl we had met earlier in the week joined us in our wallowing. Sucking down consolatory banana shakes, we contemplated our next move.

“You two going to the lake anytime?” an Australian accent roused us from our misery.

“Well, actually…” Kaelyn began explaining the day’s misadventure. Meanwhile, our friend and I chatted about Uyghur culture and religion. Soon, the conversation turned to the United States. After watching a grainy Britney video on her cell phone, I had the unpleasant task of explaining that Spears, now a mother of two, had since been divorced and in rehab. No one wants to be the bearer of such bad news. To take her mind off it all, I struggled to remember the Titanic theme song.

“We are all going back to the lake tomorrow, and we’ll stay the night!” Kaelyn proclaimed. We had passports and two more people to split cab fare this time. Our new yurt-mates were Shannon, a 20-year-old Aussie coffee grinder, and Max, a bookish Brit bound for Cambridge.

Our Han cabbie, eager to impress the new laowai, gunned it through the canyons yet again. We arrived back at Karakul in time to wander the lakeshores and watch the sunset. Not as romantic as it may sound, as fierce Himalayan winds hurled pebbles of death at us every step of the way. A German backpacker, also squinting to enjoy the sunset, ambled down the hill and took refuge in our yurt. We spent the rest of the night listening to worn-out Kyrgyz pop cassettes and helplessly gesturing thanks to our hosts.

Which brings us back to the cold morning in the yurt. The four of us 20-somethings lie huddled underneath giant furry blankets, likely made from the hairless camel parked outside. A yak is running circles around the house. A pleasant alternative to a New Mexican rooster, his burping roar is heard every time he passes the thin door.

Our host breaks some Nan bagels for breakfast. A piping hot bowl of yak milk tea warms us up. Both alarm clock and thirst quencher, I had grown to appreciate the noble yak. Kae and I jump onto our newly rented camel, Todd, for a morning jaunt around the lake. Max and Shannon set off for a cold walk, our sleepy German friend joining them sporadically.

From high atop Todd, whose spindly, shaved legs now refuse to move, we spot another lone traveler on the path ahead. He squints under his black Fedora, his Irish brogue immediately giving him away.

“I’m David from Galway,” he yells against the wind whipping off the lake.

“I’m Irish, too! 100%. My name is Kaelyn Forde!”

Todd stoops to graze, bored with the interlude.

“Forde…that’s my mother’s name,” he says astonishingly. “We’re probably cousins!”

After verifying that indeed he spelled Forde with the Gaelic e, Kaelyn wishes her probable cousin well, she gives Todd a swift kick in the hump and we’re off. Tucked between Afghanistan, Pakistan, Kyrgyzstan, and Kazakhstan, it only took a stubborn camel to find family.

We regroup at the yurts, now filled with new wind-burnt travelers, and pack up to head back to Kashgar. The fine business scheme these Kyrgyz entrepreneurs have set up seems lucrative. I contemplate whether a South Central Los Angeles yurt hostel would have the same allure. As we pull out in our bright lime green taxi, the driver stops to say goodbye to a Tajik at the gate. Or, as is the case with most Chinese transactions, fight with him…

Our driver had failed to mention that we needed tickets, preferring to take the “backdoor” of our yurt. We had paid for our pulled noodles and Todd-hair blankets, but the entrance fee was the real Tajik cashcamel. An audience soon assembles around our Han driver and the gate guard as they scream about the actual value of our visit. How the value of my presence could be debated is beyond me, but after half an hour of screaming, the two part with smiles and laughs, and we are speeding back to John’s Café.

Chocolate pancakes never tasted so good as we talk about the trip. The western café is a welcome escape from yak milk, yak meats and just plain yaks. A young Israeli man joins us for a few drinks as Kaelyn and I try to comprehend the sheer coincidence of running into a relative at Karakul Lake.

In two days, we came across a world of people in an otherworldly locale. We had begun as two American travelers out for adventure. Through bad luck and bad planning with out Han cabbie, we met Australian and British buddies seeking the same experience we were. We slept in a Kyrgyz yurt, accompanied by a German hiker. After a cold night inside, a camel takes us to meet an Irish relative along an empty waterfront trail. A Tajik man hassles us on our way home. We end with numerous bottles of beer and an Israeli university student contemplating if he should ever return to his homeland.

So we sit at John’s, enjoying a banana smoothie with our new travel mates. After working up five Qingdaos’ worth of courage, Shannon invites two guys to join us. They are Nigerian rocket scientists here on business. They work for the national satellite industry, and are here in Kashgar to talk with the Chinese government about funding. Over Kung Pao chicken, French fries and Western omelets, we don’t struggle to make conversation.

If only I knew who those two men dressed in black back at the yurt were…

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Comments

[Natey]

Another fine installment in the adventure that is your life
I suppose I'll comment, as I always enjoy a good comment now and then and us being such like souls it would do you no harm. I'm really left wordless yet again, how you can be so delibrate and to the point yet still flow easily and fluidly like the Mighty Rhine River (yes I am in Germany right now (and yes the Z and Y are switched which makes typing incredibally awkward)) leaves me envious with every re-reading. In perusing this latest installment, it deems my prose pithyless, pathetic, pretentious and O So prehensile (I ran out of p's and I'm tired). Keep up the fine, fine work. That is all.