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Published: June 27th 2007
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KASHGAR, CHINA - (June 2007)
Fri 22nd - Fri 28th June - (Kashgar) After spending three weeks travelling with Hee it was strange to be travelling solo again. It was sad to see him go, unfortunately in the opposite direction to where I was heading. I had really enjoyed travelling with him and he had been really good company and had made the experience, even more fantastic.
With Hee gone, I'd now have to do everything myself again without the aid of someone who could speak a bit of Chinese. It would mean that those long journeys through China and beyond would become very boring and tiresome again.
From Urumqi to Kashgar (Kashi) was no exception. A 22 hour train journey in a train compartment where no one seemed to speak or understand English or even wanted to try and communicate. To make things worse I had to make the journey without the aid of my MP3 player which had broken long ago!
I arrived in Kashgar on Saturday morning. After getting off the train I quickly found a taxi, or should I say a taxi quickly found me, and 30 minutes later I was
checking into a hotel recommended by Lonely Planet which is built around the old British Consulate building that once operated in Kashgar at the time of the so called
'Great Game' between the British and Russian Empires.
Whilst initially Kashgar looks like any other Chinese city, Kashgar is a world away from Han China. Kashgar is located around 3500km to the west of Beijing close to China's western border with Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Pakistan. The city is populated with a mix of Uighurs, Tajiks, Kyrgyz, Uzbeks and Han Chinese.
Kashgar has been a famous Silk Road trading centre for over two millennia and is home to the still world famous 'Sunday Bazaar' where traders from the surrounding areas and countries come to sell their goods and animals to locals and tourists alike.
Being so far away from Beijing and with the Chinese policy of every part of China operating on the same time zone as Beijing, it didn't get dark in Kashgar until around 11pm. However, the local non Chinese population have compensated for this by operating their own time system, Xinjiang time, which like the surrounding countries is two hours behind Beijing time.
This can
sometimes make for a rather confusing situation because if someone gives you the time, you have to clarify whether it is Beijing or Xinjiang time? And after travelling in the rest of China for the last 6 weeks my body clock was most definitely on Beijing time! It was strange to see the streets of Kashgar all but dead at 8am Beijing time (6am local time) when I was used to getting up.
Whilst the majority of Kashgar's population are not ethnically Han Chinese, they are under no illusions as to who rules over them. As a great big stamp of authority, the Chinese have placed one of the biggest statues of Chairman Mao in the whole of China in one of the main city centre squares, to the annoyance of much of the local population.
Although Kashgar is a fabled city along the old Silk Route there’s not much left to see. There's the local Id Kah Mosque which is supposed to be one of the largest in China - which was ok but I've seen far better - and there's still a small section of the old city standing which you can only enter after paying
an entrance fee.
However, on the north-eastern outskirts of town is the Abakh Hoja Maziri which is the tomb of Abakh Hoja - who was apparently one of Kashgar's more popular past rulers. I wasn't initially going to make the effort to go and see the tomb as it was a bit out of the city centre and I was getting fed up with seeing so called ‘tourist attractions’ that weren't that great. However, I'm glad I did make the effort this time. The tomb is a magnificent little building covered in fabulous blue/ green glazed tiles - something which will hopefully give me a foretaste of bigger and better things to come in Uzbekistan.
By arriving in Kashgar on a Saturday, I'd arrived just in time to visit the world famous Sunday market. Whether its just because I'm not a shopper, or whether it was due to the fact that I had probably the worst hangover since leaving Australia after a Saturday night drinking with a group of other travellers who "forced" me to drink the Chinese local spirit called Baijiu (which is absolutely horrible - I’m calling it a cultural experience!), but the market didn't do
it for me. Lots of people crowded into a small space and lots of shops selling the same old ‘tourist pap’. After around 30 minutes looking around the market I'd had enough, and headed back to the hotel to sleep off my hangover.
Kashgar is the start (or end depending on which way you travel) of the Karakoram Highway which runs through the Karakoram mountains from China into Pakistan. The highway is supposed to be the highest highway in the world (on the Pakistan side I think). While I'm not going to Pakistan on this trip the LP says that it’s well worth making a trip along part of the highway up to a place called Karakul lake, a glacial lake which is surrounded by snow covered mountains, one of which is the Muztagh-Ata Mountain (Mushitage Shan) which at 7546m is the highest mountain in the area.
After a bit of searching around for the best way to get to Karakul lake, on the Sunday night in the local restaurant next to the hotel (John's International cafe) I meet an Australian and French girl who were going up to the lake on the Monday morning and who were
going to spend the night there. So on the Monday morning we all met up and caught the local bus up to the lake. On the bus we also met a Hungarian guy who was also travelling to the lake before entering Pakistan. To begin, with the scenery was the same old desert scenery that I'd now been in for a while. However, the bus soon started climbing up into the mountains. At first the mountains were just bare rock and had no covering vegetation but as the bus steadily climbed higher, the mountains gradually became snow covered.
- (Karakul Lake) - The bus took around 6 hours to reach the lake where we got off and were immediately surrounded by locals who wanted us to stay at their yurt - yurts being the only accommodation at the lake. We quickly managed to find a suitable yurt and settled in where we were offered some lunch and some Yak's milk tea which fortunately tasted slightly better than the Yak's butter tea that I'd had in Tibet!
After lunch, and after the obligatory 'shopping' option which was conducted by three teenage girls who our host described as
'
business' women, I took leave and wondered around the lake. The lake was indeed well worth the effort of getting to and looked very pretty with the surrounding snow covered mountains in the background.
When we'd arrived we were shown several Yurts where we could stay. The two girl's chose one yurt while myself and the Hungarian guy chose another. To begin with, the atmosphere in 'our' Yurt was a bit strained as the whole family bedded down in our yurt while the girls had their yurt all to themselves.
At first we were unsure whether we had invaded the local family’s space and wondered whether we should have stayed in the other yurt with the two girls. However, the family didn't seem to mind and as the family couldn't speak any English and we couldn't speak any Uighur or Kyrgyz (the population in this area being mainly ethnic Kyrgyz) we stayed where we were and were consequently offered plenty of Yak's milk tea to warm us up during the night when it got very cold outside.
After one night at the lake, I left the others who were going onwards towards Pakistan and I managed to
secure a lift back to Kashgar in a shared taxi where I planned to sort out some transport to Kyrgyzstan, which was to form the next part of my trip back home.
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