Kashgar is an ancient oasis town on the western tip of China. The area is home to Uyghurs, a Turkic speaking, Muslim community. It is in Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region. The region is by no means autonomous and is quickly filling up with Han (China’s dominant ethnicity). Through a combination of modernization, repression, and flooding the area with Han immigrants, the Uyghur people and culture are slowly being snuffed out.
I am a huge Silk Road buff. And Kashgar is Silk Road Central. My plan is to visit the Sunday Bazaar– the largest in Central Asia– and to travel the Chinese section of the Karakoram Highway. The highway crosses the Pamir Mountains and connects Pakistan with China. Bin Laden’s hideout, in Abbottabad, is along the Karakoram. A few miles to the west of the highway are the borders with Tajikistan and Afghanistan’s Wakhan Corridor.
During my 2004 trip, Kashgar’s transformation into a Han city had already begun. Under the guise of seismic safety, the Chinese government began razing ancient buildings and relocated the population to soul-sucking, and poorly constructed, apartment blocks. The outdoor bazaar was slowly being moved to anonymous concrete buildings and improvised shops made out of steel shipping containers. This is the beginning of the end of a way of life.
The day before my road trip on the Karakoram, I went to John’s Cafe to hire a driver. John’s Cafe is strictly a meeting place for Western backpackers, mountaineers, and tourists of the obscure. It is run by a Han Chinese, John, who has leveraged his proficiency in English, entrepreneurial savvy, and no doubt government connections, into a successful business. The restaurant tries its best to provide a menu familiar to foreigners. However, in such a remote place, one has to wing it. As an example, ketchup for the fries was essentially canned tomato paste with sugar. It gets an A for effort.
More than just food, John’s Cafe arranges trips and rides to the surrounding environs. The most adventurous would hire one of John’s new-ish Land Cruisers, along with a driver and assistants/porters, to go to K2’s base camp. Others can hire a driver with an older Japanese sedan for a guided tour of Kashgar. I opted for something in between.
I make the deal with John. In exchange for $100 U.S., I would get a driver, a co-driver, a van for two days, meals, and a night in a yurt at Karakul Lake, my destination. Having just spent 1 RMB, or 12.5 cents, on a lamb kebab, I was a little shocked at the price. Nevertheless, I rationalized the cost by thinking about all the money I saved thus far on my trip to China.
Why John insisted on a driver and a co-driver, I still do not know. It certainly did make my experience richer, to be sure.
John tells me that the drivers will be in a van waiting for me outside my hotel at 9 a.m.
It is 9 a.m., Xinjiang time. In a cruel edict by Beijing, the powers that be decided that the entire nation (China is larger than the U.S.) would only have one time zone. That means when it’s 10 p.m. in Beijing, the sun has still not yet set in Xinjiang, thousands of miles to Beijing’s west. All banks, government agencies, and large stores in Kashgar go by Beijing time. However, many Uyghurs, as a small but significant protest, refuse to live by Beijing time. So, when someone in Xinjiang tells you that he will meet you at 9 a.m., it could mean 6 a.m., 9 a.m., or noon.
Part of my obsessive-compulsive behavior is manifested by my mortal fear of being late for the beginning of any journey. The night before this trip, as I lay in my Soviet-era hotel bed, I cursed myself for not asking John whether or not he was going by Beijing time.
For some reason, I intuit that John meant Xinjiang time, not Beijing time. Luckily, as I step out of my hotel’s lobby, I see a bronze 4-wheel drive Mitsubishi Delica van with two middle aged Han men inside, parked across the street. I carefully navigate across the street, not wanting an unfortunate run-in with a green VW Jetta taxi cab to ruin a journey that has barely started. I make it across, ask the men in Mandarin if they are waiting for me, and climb on board with my backpack.
As we wind through the streets of Kashgar, clogged with Land Cruisers, Jetta taxis, and donkey carts, I look out the window with glee. I’m going to Karakul Lake.
Images source: Maxichamp
