Kashgar Sunday Market to LanZhou Days 6-8

Day 6: Kashgar Sunday Market / get food poisoning

Day 7: Train to Turpan / feel like shit

Day 8: Train to Lanzhou / feel like shit

Woke up on sunday and was very excited to go to the livestock market, since that was what got me interested in Kashgar in the first place - the market was supposed to be one of the largest in the world. Unfortunately I also felt vaguely like shit because whatever I had eaten in Karakul was beginning to take its toll on my digestive system. I dragged myself to the market anyway, and I'm glad I did because the animal market was cool, although I don't know if I would say it was any better than a state fair or something, but there were an abundance of interesting Uigher faces so in that respect it was much cooler than a bunch of fat middle americans.

old Uigher man at the enterance

Entrance to the livestock market; the animals were mostly cows and sheep with a smattering of camels, donkeys and horses.

Old man selling Yak Nui Nai and bagels

This is how we unload sheep from carts.. poor sheep..

spray painting the sheep so that owners can tell whose are whose

After spending some time at the Livestock Market I went to to the "sunday market", with my health condition rapidly deteriorating, although I was still in denial and thought I was just tired. I was only there for about thirty minutes before it became apparent I had a fever and was actually sick. I left but was actually ok with my truncated visit because the market did not live up to my expectations in any way at all - it just seemed like any tourist market in a chinese city, which is the reaction everyone else I talked to had. It definitely did not hold up to the Grand Bazar, and Olie, the british kid who was in my room, said that all of the markets he went to in the Stans were much cooler. As I was crossing the road to hail a cab a little old lady latched onto my arm and used me as a shield against the oncoming traffic which was kind of funny.

I went back to the hotel and spent the next 24 hours extremely uncomfortable because I had given my last painkillers to the sick girl at Karakul so I had nothing to break my fever. Then I got on the train the next day and spent another 24 hours with a horrible fever bumping along from Kashgar to Turpan. My saving grace on the train was a girl who spoke perfect english and who got me hot water from the connecting car and fed me bread when I could eat. She worked at the university in Urumqi teaching english and we had a great discussion about the election (she was for Obama), government participation in China (it does not exist but may get better as people become more educated), and reactions to lesbianism in China: (completely fine in the younger generation, frowned upon by old people).

I had to wait 5 hours in Turpan for the next train to come through and accidentally managed to sit in the middle of a cluster of old Han chinese women, who were exactly like monkeys. They were grabbing things, chattering at the top of their lungs, spewing sunflower seeds from their mouths when they talked, and constantly lifting up their shirts to scratch their armpits - no joke. All of these traits are cumulatively what I hate in chinese people.

When I first got to China none of this bothered me...but the excessive pushing, shouting, talking with mouths full etc. kind of wears on you after a while - if I were to compare the average middle lower class chinese people to an animal it would definitely be to monkeys. This sounds incredibly harsh and sorry to all my chinese, chinese/american friends (none of you belong to the group of chinese people I am talking about anyway), but if you live here for a few months you will see what I mean about the vast majority being monkeys. I digress.

got on another 24 hour train to Lanzhou, and when I got off of that train I was starting to feel a lot better... but it was still 3 days of fever and not eating...brutal... I never want to get food poisoning again... especially since the whole time I was envisioning myself ending up in a shitty Xinjiang hospital from dehydration / whatever else you get from food poisoning.

It snowed on the train!!
Picture of the train to Lanzhou, hard sleeper. The train was so much nicer than the train to and from Kashgar... they actually announced things in english on this one!!

Karakul Lake, Day 4

Day 4 of the trip: 10 hour drive from Kashgar to Khunjerab Pass in Pakistan and then back to Karakul Lake.

Khunjerab pass is at 4693 meters (15,397 feet) and is the highest paved border crossing in the world and is relatively close to K2 (2 hour drive).

The kid that I had met the day before, Jeremy, was hiring a car to take him up to Karakul lake since the bus only runs once a week during the low season and he let me come with him only paying a fraction of the cost since he knew I was unemployed (hey it gets you some pity perks!)

On the way up to Karakul lake and Khunjerab pass to Pakistan the scenery was probably the most awe inspiring and humbling I have ever seen. It made Tian Chi, which until then I had been pretty impressed with, look like Kansas. To add to this experience, we needed to make periodic stops to shoo wild Camels and Yak out of the road which was pretty novel.

One of the most impressive sights we passed was an otherworldly salt lake. It was so strange because it as so different than the mountain terrain around it - almost like a part of the Sahara / Mars had been transplanted to the middle of the alps, to give you a mental image.

there were weird tufts of brass growing out of the water too making it kind of look like the Dead Marshes in LOTR for all you fellow Tolkien nerds.

The drive was quite long to the pass but the scenery was so ridiculous I was entertained the entire time. Also, our drive blared Uigher music the and supplemented this with his own singing and as much dancing as he could do behind the wheel without killing us.

The scene at the border was completely in line with the excessive bureaucracy and rigidity that typifies china: about 15 chinese border guards all armed to the teeth on the chinese side and 1 pakistani guy on the other. Because we didn't have visas a chinese guy had to drive with us to the Pakistani side in case we tried to run off into the mountains or something.. who knows.. I don't think we would have gotten far had we tried, it looks pretty cold. We talked to the Pakistani border guard for a while, who spoke perfect english and was really cool. Then some guys from the Khunjerab National Park drove up and started telling us about the national park and snow leopards. Turns out they don't hate americans because we fund their Snow Leopard conservation effort - I was very relieved by this and figured I didn't have to pretend to be Canadian.

Chinese border marker..

Park Ranger from the Khunjerab National Park. He says he sees snow leopards all the time - maybe Planet Earth is lying that you have to lay in wait in a little snow cave for months before you can see one.

Pakistani side

Prettttttty scenery at the border

More pretttty scenery at the border. After about 45 mins of chatting and admiring the scenery we got back in the car and drove back to Karakul lake, stopping in Tahskurgan on the way for some lunch.

River valley in Tashkurgan

Old stone fort near Tahskurgan. In a time long ago and far away it was sieged by the Mongol Hordes when they got bored and everyone inside died from dehydration and other fun things.

We got to Karakul after dark, and I think that the house we stayed at had the one electric lightbulb in town since I saw no other light anywhere. The room we stayed in was really cool, the walls and floor were all covered in carpets, probably adding insulation to the house which itself was made out of mud, very similar to adobe houses in the south west. The family was Uigher and were very welcoming to us even though we couldn't communicate that well. Their daughter had a fever so I came to the rescue with my traveling pharmacy and gave her some ibuprofen and decongestants.

Room in the house we stayed at in Karakul

Staying with them was cool mainly because it seemed that they were not changing their behavior at all because of our presence. They spoke and gossiped in Uigher, invited neighbors over, made dinner, etc... so it was really just like being a fly on the wall. For dinner we had AMAZING Yak Nui Nai (milk) that was more like a cross between butter, cream cheese, and brie. Then a drink that was also derived from the noble Yak which tasted kind of like Chai but a little more salty. The wife made noodles which went into a Yak meat and potato stew..then for dessert we had salted yak meat.....just kidding.. it was very Yak-centric meal in general but no Yak dessert. Some of the neighbors came over after dinner to look at us and hear any news that our driver brought from Kashgar. We were treated to Uigher music videos on their tiny TV which was obviously a big treat for the family and our driver and the son got up and danced and forced me to join them.

First day in Kashgar - Day 3 of trip

Day 4: Arrive Kashgar at noon

My hotel is only 35 kuai a night! score! The two guys in my room have both been on the road for a while judging by their smell. I vacated the room pretty quickly on account of said smell and went to go walk around the old town of the city. I had a wonderful lunch of garbanzo beans with a really spicy sauce and a piece of nan for 2 kuai. There are also otherworldly delicious bricks of walnuts and carmel that I would have eaten all day if I had not thought I should eat lunch. After I was accosted by a group of kids who all wanted to play with my camera resulting in at least 20 blurry pictures of eyes and teeth since the zoom was set to maximum the whole time.



I saw another foreigner, one of the only I had seen so far so naturally I made friends - he had a really nice camera so at first I thought he might have a really cool job like photographing for National Geographic or something but no such luck.

Doorfront written in Uigher. Until 1984 Uigher was written in a roman alphabet but rumor has is that the chinese government changed it to arabic because the Uighers had too much of a leg up over the Han chinese in learning english. This sounds crazy until you hear a Uigher speak english and compare it to the shitty pronunciation of the rest of the country.

narrow streets that wind all the way through old town in no particular pattern

Boys playing pool on the side of the street

Uigher man serving food to children at lunch time from school

Uigher girl eating lunch

We walked around for a while and ended up wandering into a courtyard where an old woman made us feel completely at home and fed me pomegranates from the tree outside her window. She also taught me the Uigher name for them: it sounds like anna. While I was enjoying my ana, which was so unripe it made all the muscles in my jaw ache, a little boy came out with a soccer ball and wanted me to play with him so I did for about ten minutes until his mother came and put an end to our game. Party pooper.

Pomegranates

Old woman who fed us

I also tried this delicious sort of candy / who knows what the fuck it was, that a woman on the side of the street was breaking off in giant chunks with a chisel. The outside of the big circular candy "wheel" seemed to be covered in green moss in the same way those cheeses have the hard red skin on the outside. The woman gave me some for free and I tried to steer clear of the moss. It tasted kind of like a cross between rock candy and honey - who knows what it was.

There was a Mosque about 5 miles outside the city I wanted to see, so I suggested that we rent bikes and peddle out there. My bike was stuck in third gear the whole time or so it seemed... so while being fun the trip was slightly more arduous than I would have liked. The tomb / Mosque was much cooler than expected though, and we even got a dance performance complete with a plate of grapes to munch on while we watched.

The tomb outside the city

On the way back through the city we caught the sunset which lit up all of the mud houses and made it look more reminiscent of Jordan or Beirut. The bicycle trip back through old town was very pretty as it was dusk and the smoke from the chuar fires were filling the air and catching the last light in the sky. Almost back to the hotel an old Uigher man stopped us on the street and wouldn't let us go any farther unless we stopped to smoke the joint he was rolling with him. That got us enticed enough to look at the carpets he had inside his store which took a lot of oohing and ahhing and some more joints. Finally I knew I was going to buy something if we stayed any longer so we left with promises to return later in the week.

Sake and Impromptu 4000 mile trips

Friday - 

I'm not going to elaborate much on my friday night, because lets face it, in true CMC style, I don't really think I can. 

We went out for all you can eat and drink Tepanyaki which was amazing, but the sake and beer consumption definitely set the tone for the night.  By the end we were so drunk that we invited out waiter to come out with us, which he did, and then tore through a few bars before ending up at Vicks.  The African war lords that I hung out with before were there in their same booth again and recognized me so I spent most of the night with them because I couldn't find my people.   I also ran into a kid from CMC and got an offer to sing for a band. All in all a very eventful night. 

Moving on.. 

I completely changed my itinerary around because when I went to go buy a train ticket to day they only had hard seats for the next four days, not even soft seat.  Instead I am leaving at 7:45 am for Urumqi WAY in the west of China; it is the green dot on the map.  (Tibet fell through because it was too expensive, and if I sink that kinda money I don't want to half ass it; I would want to take the train to Tibet then go overland my base camp into Nepal and down into northern India, which I do not have money to do right now.  In the west of China I'm planning on going to: 

Turpan:  home of the Flaming Mountains, second lowest place in the world and home to a thriving wine industry.

Kashgar: the mother of all markets: 200,000 nomadic traders stop by every sunday to sell their wares.  This was a main hub on the old Silk Road. 

Karakoram Highway: The way to Pakistan, this highway is supposed to be superbly beautiful

Then I'm going to hop back on the train an take it to Xiahe the most important Tibetan Buddhist temple outside of Lhasa. From there I'm going to hop back on for another 20 hour journey of Xi'an, home of the terra-cotta warriors, and hopefully, if I have time, I'll get to spend a few days in ShangHai at the end. 

All in all it will be an epic journey, and it would be a pretty good bet that at some point i'll break down and catch a flight since the entire thing by train is upwards of 60 hours I think and I tend to get a little disillusioned with train travel after the first 50. I just bought a bunch of good books though so I'm looking forward to getting into those and watching China go by outside my window. 

The red is where I am planning on going.  The farthest West city that the red goes to is Kashgar or Kashi.