Days 22, 23 and 24 - Tashkurgan, the Karakorum Highway, Kashgar, and the Flight to Beijing

[niniane]

 

10/25 – Tashkorgan to Kashgar

 

Anyway, before I went to sleep yesterday, I tried out milk beer which was...interesting. The first sip was revolting (as I got mostly the yeast mat, ugh!) But after that it was...okay. It was slightly alcoholic, buttery, yougurty, very sweet stuff. I may have to try a recipe and see if I can market it as it's a lot better than kambucha and can extol many of the same properties. Huh.

 

Anyway, woke up early for the sunset, which wasn't super spectacular, then had a wonderful breakfast at the Crown. (They cooked eggs, sausage, and toast along with potatoes and vegetables. Yummy!!!!!!!) Then we went off to the Stone City, a 2,500 year old ruin which is more or less still Tashkurgan. It makes a lot of sense, when you think of it. If you want to get into China, period, you have to go over mountains...and Tashkurgan is in a moderately fertile valley (with water) between two incredibly high mountain passes. It's kind of the way to go, so logically, yes, people would live there to guard it and extract their fee.

The Stone City remains clearly a city. I have no idea how things are lasting so well up here.


A boardwalk over the grasslands near the Stone City, with yurts and grazing yaks.


Dad walking through the Stone City. We were literally the only people there. It was kind of incredible.



After that, we went to the very small Tajik cultural museum where we learned that Tashkorgan is also home to the oldest Zoroastrian ruins in the world, as well as saw a pretty wedding dress (brilliant red and wonderfully beaded - new!) as well as some pictures of the local rodeo with men riding yaks and playing polo, of all things.

 

We got back in the car and began the long descent. Since the weather was good, we got some wonderful views of Muztag Ata (at 7,546 meters tall), which was earlier hidden by clouds, as well as all the amazing glaciers leading up to it. This may be the closest I get to the Himalayas (technically part of the range, sort of, in the way the Cascades are part of the Sierras)...and it was phenomenal. We also stopped at both lakes (Karakol and White Sands) to take pictures with the better light.

Muztag Ata by Karakul lake - in all its glory. The lack of clouds makes all the difference.


One more Muztag Ata. It's so gorgeous!!!!!

A flowing glacier on Muztag Ata. I love the sign. GLACIER, DON'T MOVE FASTER THAN 20 KPM! OKAY?


A camel waiting for tourists at Karakul Lake.


White sand lake without clouds.


More white sand lake.

Nothing too exciting about the trip back, really, as it was mostly just lovely. The most interesting details were:

A frosty forest up in the mountains.

At a check point we saw what we thought was a dead goat in the back of a car...before the goat started wriggling about frantically trying to escape. Who transports live goats in trunks? Well...I guess the same who might transport dead ones.

2. A herd of yaks stopped traffic by crossing a road, which seemed exciting until we ran into a herd of camels right next to it.

Yaks own the highways out here. (Incidentally I love that Chinese for Yak is "furry cow".)

Camels gonna camel.

3. Security was definitely lighter on the way back. Clearly no one is trying to stop people from getting into Kashgar, although there was a huge group of Uighers detained for some reason...

 

Anyway, a fairly light day, all in all. Onto more adventures tomorrow!

 

10/26 – Kashgar

Reflecting pond in a park in Kashgar. I liked the combination of Chinese architecture and Uigher living spaces behind it.

We roamed around Kashgar today. First we walked over to the museum, which was closed for the month. Boo. :( Then we made it up to the Fragrant Concubine/Apja Hoja tomb. This tomb was some lovely Islamic architecture, situated next to a park. A few things I found amusing...

 

1. The Fragrant Concubine isn't in the tomb. (She's buried near Beijing.) Her family is here, but not her. (It was her grandfather who built it and Qinglong, her husband, who refurbished it.)

 

2. The best place to see the tomb is outside it (for free) in the garden by the reflecting pool. Most of the rest of the tomb is being able to go inside it (not...that exciting. Just a bunch of caskets), and two mosques, which you can't really go inside anyway, so eh...

Reflecting pond by the Fragrant Concubine's tomb.


The front of the Fragrant Concubine's tomb.

3. The garden outside has a fanciful carvings depicting her life, which is funny seeing as Islam doesn't tend to like depicting the human figure but...oh well. 

A pretty garden by the fragrant concubine's tomb. Strangely enough, I liked this better than the tomb and it was free. Go figure.

Picture of Qinglong and the Fragrant Concubine and um, dancing Uighers.

So it was pretty, and probably worth the 30 RMB and walk, as it was the nicest building I've seen yet around Kashgar (not to mention that the park was beautiful).

 

On the way out, I found the only place selling books on Kashgar, which was...a post office. Kind of weird. But I bought two, so yay!

 

We ate beef noodles for lunch (so...many...) then went off to the bazaar. It was pretty amazing. There was perhaps a city block just filled with fabric (I got two types to make into dresses), as well as one of toys, hats (I really liked the Russian ones out of fox, I think), some odd purses made out of fox fur with a fox face closure (I wanted one, but...it seemed like a silly thing to buy), pots, utensils, you name it, it was there! I mostly just got scarves and my fabric. But it was interesting bargaining as some people would start at, say, 100 RMB and refuse to drop (or maybe 120 and drop to 100), while others would start at 680 for the EXACT SAME ITEM! It definitely paid to shop around. (And, of course, everything was silk and handmade *eye roll*)

 

Still, it was good for picking up stuff.

Dad in a small portion of the fabric section of the bazaar. It's ENORMOUS.

We got back to the city and I wandered over to Xinhua to see if there were books on Kashgar. Nope and nope. There was a very interesting book on Uigher houses that I kind of wanted, just it was encyclopedia sized, so nope. There were also some books in Uigher with a pretty girl on the front, one looking longingly into the distance, another with her with giant butterfly wings. It was kind of cheesy, yet sort of cute.

School kids getting out of class and going through Uigher old town. Note that the schools are crazy heavily guarded.

Then I watched the military parade. It started with a few police cars, then continued with two heavily armored cars, then four strikers, then about 200 armed military guys (who sang as they marched with their shields and rifles), then another six strikers, two more heavily armored cars, and police cars. They blocked off all the streets for the parade (using the city buses to form a barracade). And it was...impressive. It also reminded me a bit of what a victor does when they capture a city.

A small portion of the military parade.

More of the military parade.


Only a few selections of the military parade. Start to finish took about an hour.

Went off to dinner after that at a little hole in the wall. We didn't order anything, but the waitress brought us bowls of broth with chickpeas in them (the broth was quite tasty), then a large gray bird that tasted kind of like chicken (but was a dark meat), then bowls of noodles with chickpeas. It was peculiar, but good. (Pretty sure it was pigeon, seeing as it was about the right size + the characters work out to "pigeon". So yay...have eaten squab now! It's not bad, FWIW. But it does look disgusting.)


Squab.

Construction in Kashgar.


The Great Mosque at sunset.


An alley in Kashgar.


Moonrise over a minaret.

I also wandered a bit on my own and got pictures as well as...Uigher cheese. You see, I'd been curious about whatever it was (I'd read about it in a guide book) and these odd pellets that looked like chalk that were being sold everywhere. I bought a pellet, took a bite and well...

I think I've found Uigher cheese. Imagine an intensely salty, brick hard, sour thing that I'd feel guilty about feeding a dog...

I suppose it's an acquired taste...

Anyway, off to fly to Beijing tomorrow then for the last of my adventures!

Time for a break.

 

10/27 – Kashgar to Beijing

 

Today was the day of bad things happening. Although the passage to the airport was easy (cab driver who used the meter and went directly there/police blockades that waved us through), the airport itself was...lacking. So, there was only a cafe (that only served beef noodles and tea, despite claiming that it served coffee (much to Mom's disappointment) and pizza) and a small gift store (that sold the same crap we could buy at the bazaar at wildly inflated prices) in the outer terminal. However, we could not move from the outer to the inner terminal until an hour before our flight...which was a bit problematic seeing as we had to go through security to get into the outer terminal (typical for Kashgar, where just going to a freaking store involves going through an x-ray detector + a frisk + standing around for the shop keeper to let you in, just to go through another x-ray, frisk, and despite all that having to lock up your bag just in case something miraculously got through....) and that our flight was delayed by three hours (oh, China...how can you be so freaking efficient with trains and buses and yet so useless with airplanes, I'll never know. NEVER. Seriously, China, WTF? Why don't you move your head of trains over to your air travel department for a year and watch it never have another delay.) So we spent three hours eating noodle soup that was 10xs as expensive (and not as good, duh) as the stuff in the city, before going through the most extensive baggage check of my life.

 

Apparently not just did laptops and phones need to be removed from the bags (duh), but all metal items. So I had to go through about a dozen passes as I kept forgetting that there might be ONE FREAKING COIN that resided in my purse that somehow threw off the x-ray. So the bag would slowly be emptied, coin by coin, until literally everything in the bag was in its own separate tray. (Note that only me in my dress went through the metal detector, and then I got a good feeling up by the woman at the other end. It was literally everything other than a spread and squat.)

 

Of course, with so many goings through, I forgot a tray. Whoops. Luckily Chinese TSA hunted me down and returned my missing tray (good as it included my coat liner, which I'm quite fond of! They can keep the coin purse!) Which I'll admit was rather nice. (To be honest, other than the one crazy guard in Aksu, everyone has been quite nice. I mean, the 45 minute police stop sucked, but the officer was very polite about it all and quite concerned about us catching our train on time. He just was fairy inept, couldn't get the passport scanner to work, wanted to make sure there was nothing in our bags, confiscated our freebie corkscrew (I am now imagining a terrorist running through an airport with a corkscrew screaming “Allah Akbar!” and trying to kill someone with it to much amusement), etc. But he wasn't mean. Neither were these people...they just had a job to do and were doing it, even if the job was kind of silly when it comes down to it. (Yeah, I'm totally going to murder someone WITH MY COIN PURSE! But yeah, yeah, it does have metal so needs a separate scan, yargh!)

 

Once on the other side of security, there were a few more shops (a noodle place, a vaguely convenience store type thing, a jewelry store, of all things), as well as more seats (the outer terminal had literally none, which again is ridiculous in a place where this is a holding pen for people whose flights have been delayed by hours). However, there was no place to buy water, which was more than a bit annoying as we sure as heck couldn't have taken water through our intense security check point. Yargh. So I filled myself up from the water jugs and just hoped for the best.

 

The flight itself was reasonably uneventful. (We flew, all got off the plane – with our stuff, nach – in Urumqi just to get back on the same damned plane.) But everyone was testy when we got off. Which might explain why, as I was reaching for my bag, someone decided that I was taking too long and elbowed me in the eye.

 

It was hard enough that I blacked out. I screamed, the useless ass flight attendants did nothing, ugh...

 

Anyway, when I got off, I was deeply unhappy (like, I could barely see), so I reported it to the police, who were very sympathetic and drove me around looking for the person, not that it would really do much good, seeing as I wasn't exactly looking for potential assailants when I was taking down my bag, and by the time I could see anything again, the assilant was long since gone. So I reported as best I could and was done with it.

 

I ended up going to the clinic, where the woman clearly couldn't do much more than give me antibacterial drops and tell me that I ought to be hospitalized (this seems to be something the Chinese leap to at a moment's notice, for no reason that I can discern, but they're far more ready to shove someone into a hospital than Americans are. I had a similar fight with this when I was in Hong Kong. Like, I can take my own antibiotics and sleep in my bed. WHY DO YOU WANT TO HOSPITALIZE ME? They're a bit more protective here/less worried about insurance copays.) As it was 3 am at this point, we decided to wait it out. And while my eye felt awful for the next few days, I can see now and it doesn't hurt much (even it's streaked red), so I guess it all worked out. (Go recuperative body!!!)