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!!

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.