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.

Urumqi, Tian Chi and the Train Ride to Kashi

Day 1: Fly into Urumqi (4 hours) pronounced: ooroomchee

I was slightly disappointed when I got off the plane because Urumqi is just like Lonely Planet says: industrial and dusty with no camels or people in funny hats in sight. XinJiang is one of the most unstable "autonomous" regions in China on account of its overwhelming number of minorities and its short history as a part of China, so the chinese government has been relentlessly pursuing a "Hanification" policy in Urumqi for the past decade, awarding Han chinese money and benefits if they move there. The whole area is home to populations of Kyrgiks, Tajiks, Kazakis, Uighers, all whom drifted over borders during the course of the Silk Road's history.

My trip got off to an auspicious start meeting two Israeli guys at the hostel. One had been living in India for four months, and the other had been backpacking across the Stans by himself for the past four months, so hard core travelers. The former had just received a tiny bag of Israeli coffee from home and with great ceremony and much rhapsodizing about the motherland we enjoyed it, the first cup of coffee in a few months for all of us. It tasted like cloves or nutmeg, probably very similar to Turkish coffee.

Making coffee with much pomp and circumstance

Later I had a wonderful dinner of streetfood: a pomegranate and a sweet potato, and then we went in search of a bar, and in doing so got lost in a construction site. After jumping many fences we found our way out which I think was solely due to their israeli army skills since I contributed very little to the whole escape.

Day 2 Tian Chi:

Woke up (9 am beijing time 7 "local" time) to get the bus to Tian Chi before the chinese tourists showed up with their cameras. Note: all of China is in one time zone (fuck if I know why) but because Urumqi is at least two hours behind Beijing everything is done on either "local time", or "Beijing time" - its very confusing and you have to make sure you know which is being used when people are quoting times or you might show up local time and find out your train went at Beijing time.

Anyway, after lots of attempts to find the bus station, including walking into a restricted zone and having policemen run after me yelling in chinese, I found the right bus, and after some driving made it to Tian Chi (Heaven Lake). It was very pretty, but in true chinese style it was hard to escape the techno music blaring from the gift shop at the head of the lake. Chinese tourists rarely venture 50 meters away from this or the bus, so once I started walking around the lake things became much nicer and chinese free.

Pretty waterfall on the walk down that was deserted because all of the chinese tourists took little buses up and down the hill and were too weak to hike. losers

Tian Chi

Cool little abandoned / overgrown pagoda I found on the top of a hill

I couldn't find a public bus home so I bartered passage on a chinese tour group bus whose passengers were all uber perplexed to see a non chinese climb aboard. The tour guide actually had to announce over the loudspeaker which country I was from so that people would sotp pestering me.

Over the course of my two week trip I got guessed every nationality possible: Israeli, Kazaki, Russian, French, Tajik, and even once Uigher..which is kinda hard to believe. I was only guessed american a few times, much less than other nationalities, but of course, if I opened my mouth it became obvious where I was from.

Ghat is a obscure english word that means the banks of a river.. it is only used in Indian and Pakistani english so you can see how this is confusing...

Awesome signs at Tian Chi: Protect the Environment and be civilized everyday

After Tian Chi I got dinner on the street again. There was so much good food: bread, chestnuts, and they had these really yummy looking omelet things where they guy put some greens in the bottom of what looked like a muffin tin and then poured egg over it to make an omelet - if I liked egg more I would have taken a gander at them. I also bought Pomegranate juice from one of the vendors: they have a press on their cart and squeeze it right before your eyes!!! It was so much better than that Pom bullshit you can get in the US which is mostly sugar with a little bit of food coloring - this was like biting into a pomegranate without having to worry about spitting out the pesky seeds.

After this I was still hungry and smelt chuar in the air, the most wonderful of aromas, but after I followed my nose and found the stand they only had what looked like meat. Not daunted, I went and bought some green beans at a super nearby, which I then tried to make the guy cook for me.. After he realized I was serious about not eating meat he thought the whole thing was a great joke and starting to tell everyone who passed on the street I was vegetarian. Turns out all of the Chuar was not meat, so he made me try two or three other kinds that were fake "meat" but tasted to me slightly dubious. After some oink oinking on my part and picture drawing to ask if it was pig he managed with he help of google translator and paper to draw a decent picture of corn. As I was about to leave the handle of my shitty 50 kuai bag broke and he tried to fix it for me, gashing his hand open in the process on one of the Chuar skewers, so then there was a mad dash for bandaids to mop it up before too much of his DNA went all over my bag. After all of these theatrics he only let me pay him one kuai for everything, including all the food I ate.

The guy who fed me and fixed my bag at great risk of life and limb


Day 3: 23 hour train ride or "meet and greet" to Kashgar

The train was pretty nice: four bunks per compartment, pretty clean, the bathroom was actually pretty awesome for being on a train. Not a single person spoke a word of english, but everyone wanted to talk to me anyway. Judging from their looks, I was some sort of alien which landed in their car on the train and they assumed that extraterrestrial life was smart enough to learn chinese through osmosis if they just kept talking to me long enough. A chinese guy with a really nice camera helped me do cool things on mine and showed me the best places to take pics from on the train. There was also an old Uigher dude who called me his MeiGuo Huar (american flower) the whole time and showed me pictures of his family which he carried around with him in a tattered photo album.

My Uigher friend who called me his MeiGuo Huar


Picture of him when he was a young man

Desert scenery near Kashgar

More scenery from the train

More...

Last one I swear. Mostly it was a lot of desert

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. 

Freeeeeedom

I have no job anymore

First unemployed beer... they are trying to look sad

Now I am going to tell you why this is a good thing and why I'm not have a complete mental breakdown from joining the ranks of the unemployed.

1) We kind of knew it was coming: I didn't know it was quite this imminent, but with the market as it is we knew no one could possible be starting new projects or investing VC funding.   Also the falling value of the dollar and rising RMB is undermining the reason for outsourcing.. so bye bye ACG. (I can say the name now since I don't work there anymore)

2) The job sucked:  Our job position was kind of unnecessary, apart from telling the engineers what hard words in english meant in emails from clients,  so most of the time I vaguely felt like I should be doing something but there was nothing for me to do.  It was valuable because I learned that I do not want to work in IT and that I am still too restless to take a job and sit down at it for five years.   I think once I get home at xmas I might try and take a completely different direction that business for a while.  Like becoming a monkey trainer, or a free diver. 

3) I got an awesome deal: I got to keep my signing bonus, got a good amount of severance, got health insurance coverage for a year, free flights to and from China, and our apartment paid through Nov, so for the three months I worked I managed to get like half my yearly salary in perks. 

4) This is the most important reason:  NOW I GET TO TRAVEL 

I have to be in the Jing until Nov. 2 for the Kanye concert, and because I don't want to leave everything here too abruptly, so until then I am staying inside China.  The one place in China that I moved here determined to see was Tibet, so hopefully this time next week I will either be there or be on a train there.  Yes, I am indeed going to take the train from Beijing to Tibet (look at a map), it is very far, but looks like it makes up for that with the scenery. 

After the 1st of Nov i'm planning on getting on a train from Beijing to Hanoi, another monster ride, and then using that as my starting point for my SE Asia adventure.  Right now plan is: 

Hanoi -> Sapa (Viet) -> Luang Prabang (Laos) -> Vienite (Laos) -> raft down the Meekong river -> Siem Rep (Cambodia) -> Phom Phen (Cambodia) -> Qu Phoc Island (Viet) -> Saigon -> Jungle Beach (Viet) -> Saigon fly to Bangkok -> Islands in Thailand for two - three weeks. 

So far this is my tentative itinerary, which I am sure will change completely.. but just to give you an idea. 

I'm also going to try and keep up with my blog posts, but they will obviously much more infrequent since I am not planning on taking my computer with me.

So in recap, this was something I couln't control at all so I am not going to beat myself up about it, and I think it was for the best; now when I go home I can focus on finding a job that I actually have a higher chance to enjoy, not that just makes me money and satisfies the requirement of having a job.  With all of the pressure at CMC to get jobs I ignored the fact that this job was not in the direction I wanted to go with my life (other than going to China) and took it because it was the best thing I found and I was sick of everyone talking about their offers at parties.  Childish I know, but aren't we all to some extent. 

Saigon - apparently I never published this.. oops

On to Saigon - thank god this is my last one of these

The prospect of 24 more hours on the open tour bus was inconceivable and I was short on time so I shelled out 60 dollars for the flight to HCMC (which everyone calls Saigon Btw).  At the airport in DaNang I caught the attention of two little vietnamese boys who kept edging up to me and then running away squealing as though I had poisonous tentacles.    After a few repetitions of this they became bolder and wanted to shake my hand and say the only english words they knew: Thank You - over and over again.   At one point I turned around and realized that a good 15 people had their faces pressed against the glass watching all of this - I had no idea I was so entertaining.

Above: Us playing with my camera, and devoted watchers from outside.

Got to Saigon and tried to get a cab into the city, which the bible said would be $5, but I wouldn't find one for less than 15 and ended up bartering passage on a motorbike instead, which was 3.  This was the best way to enter Saigon I think because then, being in the middle of the chaos, you can fully comprehend just how many bikes are on the streets.  Its like massive rapids at full flood with currents going in every direction, condensing to pour through narrow passages and then sweeping out and slowing down in the wider sections, with an odd car or two being borne along in the flood like a pieces of driftwood.

I ended up just going to a random hotel when I got there since I had nothing booked. Bad Idea. After dinner and a drink I settled down to try and sleep at midnight to find that my bed was infested with little tiny ants.  At first I tried to tough it out, brushing them off of me when the climbed up, but at 3 in the morning I was going crazy because they were so small you could hardly see them and so I felt like they were everywhere.  The AC also did not work and I was at this point slightly delirious from: lack of sleep, the heat, and because it was 3 in the morning. I left them some money on the table and went to a different, slightly more expensive (3 dollars more) hotel I had passed earlier that looked nice. Luckily there was one more key left and so I was able to sleep there the rest of the night (after checking the bed for bugs of course).

In the morning I was rejuvenated enough from my bug-free sleep to be able to go walk around and see the city.

Just to start out on an upbeat note: Saigon was by far my least favorite city among the three I went to.  The main reasons for this were: 1) the lack of any interesting architecture / old quarter 2) Its completely hectic pace that was a little too much for me 3) The bug bed.

HCMC is really just a huge city, with lots of good food and a relentless stream of motos running around on the streets.  To steal a quote from another traveler to Saigon: "crossing the streets is like playing frogger on the highest level with one life left" and it really was.   The city is much more modern and in comparison to the interesting french buildings and tree lined streets of hanoi it is lacking soul, but that is only my opinion.  As someone who does not spend a huge amount of time in big cities, I tend to gravitate in preference more towards the laid back than the chaotic.

There were some cool things though:

1. Riding around on motorcycles was awesome.. you could easily die at any second, so at least they wore helmets in Saigon.

2. I went to a really cool big market that sold anything you could ever want, including lacquerware bowls, which I wanted, and spent an hour bargaining with an awesome vietnamese girl for them - I fell like we were friends in the end.    Digression - That was one of my favorite things about vietnam vs. china: in China bargaining always ends up being an angry war of wills, in vietnam everyone was so friendly I felt like bargaining was actually fun, not a chore.

Saigon River - very dirty with lots of debris floating in it, and fabric at the market

That night I went and walked around a bit more, took some pictures of the area around my hotel.

Overall Reflection From The Trip:

It was off the hook.

I love vietnam and want to go back immediately.  I feel like I kind of did the trip wrong, so if there are any of you out there trying to see all of vietnam in 10 days, take heed: you will be sorry.  I think there is no way to do it without breaking it up into two ten day trips, 10 days in the north and ten in the south. I missed Sapa, which looks amazing from Adam's pictures and so I really wish I had tagged on an extra 4 days in the north and done that. Also in the south the Meekong Delta and Qu Phoc Island are supposed to be magnificent, so I really would have needed 8 more days in the south to do that. Below are the "perfect trips" to Vietnam that I would recommend:  (I'm assuming 10 days)

Tips:

-Also, Hanoi Backpackers Hostel was awesome - I highly recommend it if you like to drink and want to meet people.

-Fresh springrolls are not the fried kind

-All the cruises in Halong bay are pretty much the same - book through HBH when you get there - its cheaper and more fun

-The tailor shops near the downtown of Hoi Anh are better, make sure you look around

-The guy at Everybody's Fashion (shoes) is awesome.

-Cargo in Hoi Anh has awesome sandwiches, I ate there three times in a row. Also Green Moss is pretty awesome and for $2 extra you can learn how to cook the dish you order.

Northern Vietnam

Trip A: Saigon, Sapa, and Halong Bay

Over the course of the trip spend: 3 nights in Hanoi, 2 nights in Halong bay, and three or four nights trekking in Sapa.

Trip B: Above + Hoi Anh

1 night in Halong Bay, 2 nights in Sapa, 2 nights in Hanoi, night train to Hoi Anh, 2 nights in Hoi Anh, Fly out of DaNang.

Southern Vietnam

Trip C: Saigon, Meekong, and Qu Phoc

Fly into Saigon, one night in Saigon, two nights in the Meekong, 4 nights on Qu Phoc Island

Trip D: Saigon, Meekong, and Jungle Beach

Fly into Saigon, 2 night Meekong, Fly to Na Trang -> Jungle Beach, 5 nights at Jungle Beach, back to Saigon.