Biking Uighur-stan

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Lesson 1

Scaring Asian children sounds like a lot more fun than it's worth.

Every freaking time I'm playing with children on this continent and I slyly work out trying to scare them - playfully, mind you - something goes wrong. On two separate occasions in Thailand and Laos, I tried to scare some children with whom I'd already been sharing gringo-play-time ("gringo" works in any language, btw). Both times they cried. 90%!o(MISSING)f those times, I looked like an idiot. The other half, I looked like an asshole. Let's not forget that one of those bawling yard-apes so HAPPENED to be the cutest little scene-chewing princess at the whole god-damn tiny-village traditional Lao wedding dinner. What's bloginese for Buzzkill?

We had a really awesome plan to ride our bikes down the Karakoram highway, basically from right about the Chinese border with Pakistan to Kashgar. We would descend from Tashkurgan (at about 12,000 feet above sea level) through some of the most spectacular desert and mountain scenery on the planet, to arrive at Kashgar about 3 days later, and around 5,000 feet of elevation lower.

That trip theoretically began Tuesday. Monday always has a way.

Monday, Julie, Colin, and I took a ride around Tashkurgan. We began by seeing if we could ride past the checkpoint towards Pakistan to go up towards the Khunjerab pass. That wasn't happening, of course. However, I will interject that if you approach them with the right attitude, Chinese checkpoint guards are nowhere near the kind of assholes they're made out to be.

So we just bounced out to a random dirt road and started playing around with the camera. A handful of local kids just got out of school and rolled up and we kind of teased around with them for a few minutes. They seemed super-cute at the time, though, as I'm sure you'll agree, they were clearly just deviously-disguised Satan-spawn snake-demons. That's just the objective journalist in me talking. Word to your mother, Dad!

As they were walking away, rocking their crazy "last-temptation-of-christ" swagger, something came over me and I forgot everything I'd learned about not scaring Asian kids. I pretended not to be noticing them until they were just about around the bend, when I hopped on my bike, ready to pedal like crazy to catch up and scare the poop out of them. My pedalling was obviously far too powerful for western Chinese dirt roads and something happened... like a gear slipped, or maybe a tire, probably a gypsy curse or two in there somewhere, and i bit...

kind of...

Lesson 2

As frightened Asian children will tell you, revenge is a dish best served 3 times.

...ridiculously hard.

The scare tactics worked. When the kids saw my leg, they were visibly terrified. Go America! Go Alex! Later, at the hospital, the doctor had to literally cut off the huge flap of flesh that was hanging off my leg and pull the skin taut so he could stitch it. If Tashkurgan is down with recycling, then some Tajik dude probably had a really interesting dumpling on Tuesday.

Tashkurgan, by the way, is minuscule. It's basically like a border outpost. And it's in this Tajik autonomous region with an interesting border policy, so the Tajiks, Pakis, Uighurs, and Chinese that live in the area can basically cross and re-cross the border at will, but for non-locals, you gotta have all kinds of permits.

At the hospital, there was a very well-spoken English-speaking doctor there from Kashgar, who was clearly there to teach the local doctors a few things, and to whom they deferred all questions of advice and diagnosis. But, while all the other doctors wore the random Uighur/Tajik uniform (slacks, wool sportcoat, sweet golfer hat) with an obivously doctor-chic white OR-coat over said wardrobe, this head guy... I swear he bought his track suit from an eBay auction of Tony Soprano's season 3 wardrobe. The best part of the whole hospital experience was when, after I'd had a lengthy English-language debate with this dude about my rapidly fading cycling-to-Kashgar odds, Julie waltzes into the room where they're preparing to stitch me up, sizes the guy up head-to-toe, and then (while still looking at the guy and not knowing that he speaks perfect English), very bluntly asks... "who the eFF is this guy?"

He's a doctor, Julie. And not even a deaf one.

THIS GUY was pretty adamant about me not riding a bike (or even really walking) on my knee for a good 2 weeks, and most especially not doing so outside of a 2-hour radius from an emergency room. I almost didn't listen to him, but in the end, good sense prevailed. We took a lorry down the Karakoram back to Kashgar, and then began making our way back east. Tomorrow, we'll be in Shanghai, if all goes as planned. That will be like going from practically Afghanistan (which is practically Iran) to practically Japan (which is practically California) in like 2 days (which is practically 1 and a half days).

None of this blog has been extremely informative. That's the curse of my blogging style, I take forever to tell you nothing. In order to make sure that I get my blogging back on track, I'm gonna make some open monologue notes about all the shit that's gone down the last 3 weeks: the most Chinesest shit I'VE ever done; Chongqing's magical airport; the near-Urumqi Kazakh-land trek; the craziest Russian-dudes/Chinese-prostitutes dance party this county's ever seen; and lastly, the inspiration for my newfound conviction that I will someday live in a place where every time I see some lost-ass-looking fonzanoon gringo rolling past my door, I will ON PRINCIPLE invite them into my house for a few bites of bagel and the most delectable fruit that the soils of my homeland have to offer.

Talking bout RAISINS!

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Comments

[Julie]

In all fairness....
This was the 6th time, maybe 7th time I've had to take you to a hospital in Asia, and I was getting DAMNED sick and tired of people gathering in crowds to stare you down while you are in pain. It just pisses me off. I mean, you had blood pouring down your leg and then here's this dude just STARING at you...no lab coat, no nothing.... I was seconds away from shoo-ing him away from the room when you gave me the heads up. I'm just trying to protect you!