13th August : Kashgar

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After a long but reasonably uneventful train ride, we finally arrived at Kashgar Railway station, which surprisingly was just on the outskirts of the city. Trip started with a bit of a drama when on entering our already small 4 bunk sleeper compartment to discover that a family of five had already made themselves home. Two yelling toddlers completed the picture ! We squeezed ourselves into the tiny space and heaved our large packs into the even smaller space between the bunks and the standoff commenced. "Get out of our compartment" was 'our' position, while "we were here first" was there's. We finally resolved when the husband and one child reluctantly agreed to leave our space, and return to their (we assume ) allocated compartment. So we only had the Mum and one yelling child and the teenager in two bunks, and john and I in the other two. Stalemate ensued. By the time we woke in the morning, they had all left, so we enjoyed the remaining 7 hrs of the trip wallowing in the all free space !

Kashgar is a old city that is being rapidly renovated, and many of the old alleys and buildings are being 'upgraded' which we think is a huge travesty. We strolled the old city streets, experiencing the kebab sellers, the racks of mutton sellers, biscuit sellers, hot Nan bread fresh from the oven, the samosa makers, disgusting sheep body parts - ALL parts, fish sellers, vegetables, delicious vanilla ice cream made on the street in hand mixed churns, hat makers and sellers, tailors, musical instruments made in the street workshops, small mosques with the occasional call for prayers ringing out over the neighbourhood.

Eating tea that night at the Night Market, we came across the delicacy that we had been searching for - the boiled sheeps head stall. Given the grief we previously received on reporting we had eaten donkey meat, we couldn't pluck the courage to try the sheeps head ! We also avoided the huge vats of boiling goats heads soup with coiled stuffed intestines - yummy !! We reverted back to our standard - shislak kebabs which come in all shapes and sizes, and prices depending on wether you had kidney, or lamb, or fillet, or lamb fat, or gristle and bone. We are now kebab experts.

We explored the huge yellow tiled Mosque Id Kah which was built in 1442 right in the centre of the old city and can accommodate 20,000 prayers at one sitting during Eid. What was unique about this Mosque was its size and that it contained dozens of huge elm trees inside the mosque grounds.

We are off this morning on our Karakorum highway tour - first stop is Kara Kul lake.

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