A week in Kashgar

Uighur man weighing fruit,
Sunday Livestock Market,
Kashgar
Originally uploaded by rtw2007.

Well, here we are after a week resting and recuperating in Kashgar, China.

We have managed to recharge our batteries by feasting on gorgeous local food. We have become regular customers at a local restaurant where they are clearly not used to seeing tourists – the menu is only in Mandarin and no-one speaks a word of English. Despite this, we have had some really good meals there, ‘ganbian niurou’ (dry fried beef with chillies) and ‘ganbian siji dou’ (dry fried snake beans with chilli and garlic) being our staple favourites. You really can eat very well indeed here for only a few dollars.

We have also sorted out a few of our van-related issues. The water pump, which had packed up during the drama of our recent breakdown, has now been restarted using the none too technical method of sucking on the tap until the water eventually flows through. A local welder has reshaped and fixed the bracket for our waste water tank and we spent a couple of hours in a mechanics pit reattaching the tank to the base of the vehicle (though we haven’t quite managed to fix the pipe into the tank yet, so sadly it still doesn’t work).

On Friday we hired a Land Cruiser to take us to the next town of Yarkand, about 200km away around the edge of the desert. This is a slightly rawer place with no sign of the tourists that are ubiquitous in Kashgar. We explored the old town with its large traditional mosque. The front step was lined with many Uighur men (the local Muslims who look and dress far more like Central Asians than the native Chinese) sporting bright white caps and watching the world go by. From Yarkand, our driver took us north into the edge of the desert. To be honest, you would be hard pressed to realise that you were close to the desert at all, as the roads run by the rivers and irrigation channels, lined with small villages, colourful bazaars and rows and rows of mud-built houses hidden amongst the trees. Eventually we left the main road and bounced along a cart track for a couple of kilometres before coming to rest a few feet from some huge, bright white sand dunes. They were almost completely empty, eerily beautiful and very hot. We spent a few hours wandering through the dunes, clambering up to one of the higher ones (which is harder work than it looks, particularly in this heat) and chatting with a great view of the desert as the heat slowly sank out of the day.

Sunday brought the market for which Kashgar is famous. The Sunday Market was a major stop on the old Silk Route and still draws traders from Central Asia, China and Pakistan. We got up early to visit the livestock market on the southern edge of town. This is a huge affair set in a large dusty paddock, with different sections for donkeys, goats, sheep, cows etc. We started in the cattle area, full of rows of trussed up cows squirming in the heat as their Uighur owners bartered hard for fistfuls of 100 Yuan notes. The atmosphere is dusty and frantic. We found our selves jumping out of the way almost every minute to avoid being trampled by the next bull which was being dragged unwillingly past by it’s new owner (or at least by one of its new owner’s skivvies). Only slightly calmer was the sheep and goat area. Here young boys are employed to truss up rows and rows of animals to long ropes whilst again the older Uighur men stand back, stroke their beards and consider the quality of the stock. With the early morning light catching the dusty air, the atmosphere was fantastic - it is one of those places where you could wander for hours. From there it was on to the equally frenetic main Sunday Market, where you can buy everything under the sun, or so it seemed until Michael tried to buy a bog standard Casio watch and failed miserably. We bartered for a while over various things; browsed for a couple of hours soaking up the atmosphere; and then headed back out of the blaring sun.

Kashgar has been a really good place to spend some time. Although the Uighur population makes parts of the city feel very Central Asian, in other ways it feels very Chinese: there is a huge People’s Square; a suitably imposing statue of Chairman Mao; lots of colourful Mandarin shop signs; and Chinese products which bear a remarkable similarity to familiar Western goods, but at around half the price. The people have been much friendlier than Michael remembers from his trip a couple of years ago. The streets are so much more interesting here than in many of the former Soviet states which we have travelled through, where the shops have little stock and often you can barely distinguish between shops and houses. None of that here – the “high street” is brimming with life, from well heeled shoppers to Uighur men selling fruit on every corner.

The filthiness of the children here is one thing that has really shocked us, though. It is far, far worse than anywhere in Central Asia. You find yourself wandering around the streets and tripping over babies rolling around in the dust wearing next to nothing, caked in dirt and with no adults around who might potentially be responsible for them. In particular, one custom which has surprised and slightly disgusted us has been the totally lack of nappies for either Uighur or Chinese children. Children ranging from up until about five years old wear trousers which have a huge slit front to back and then just scrabble around in the dirt to go to the toilet wherever they need. That combined with the incessant spitting / hawking of the local men (“No Spitting” signs are common, but entirely ignored) means that the streets don’t feel like the most hygienic at times.

From here we will start our journey down the Karakoram Highway, spending another few days in China and then crossing into Pakistan. We are keeping our fingers crossed that we can get through to Islamabad and onto Lahore, as the security situation on parts of the KKH and in Islamabad isn’t what we would have hoped for. We are liaising with our Embassy regularly and monitoring the situation, but keep your fingers crossed that it all calms down soon.