Driving East....................

My diary for 27th May reads "Another long drive - left the desert only to come into a flat dreary landscape covered in salt pans.  All along the road I have seen depressions in the sand - & wondered what they were - when we arrived at the salt pans I realised instantly what they were.    On the way there was a stop at another wild west town - mainly for truckers.  We carried on until we came to an industrial site near a railway & made camp!"  And indeed it was an industrial site - it looked as if there had been some sort of removal of the surface over a large area and wherever we were we were in view of a mining operation slightly further up a hillside.  Having a pee was difficult because I remember having to find an area where there was an indentation and squatting down so as to be out of view of the a) the campsite and b) the mining operation - but I managed.  I also have recollections of the day being rather grey, spots of rain and certainly seeing puddles!  This part north of the Taklamakan Desert is flat and very industrial. 

On the 28th May we travelled through the mountains - I seem to think that this is the time that the road that the mountain road divided into 2 on a one-way system with quite a few miles between the 2 roads (if you look at this link you will see what I mean) before descending into the Turpan/Turfan Basin.  The Turpan Basin is the third lowest place below sea level in the world being 154m/502ft below sea level and is also very hot and dry.  But despite that the city of Turpan is a joy because of the beautiful pergolas which line the city streets in the centre.  For some reason I did not take a photo of these but putting Turpan into Google images will come up with photos that others have taken.    My main concerns in my diary entry for the 28th are to do with bodily functions - as follows!  " Stopd for a pee stop amongst the most amount of turds I have seen.  Lav at a truck stop in morning was truly horrendous.  Wd. have gone behind the lav but that was even worse"  The turd stop was just after we had descended the mountain pass and immediately before we joined the westward road at the end of the one-way system.  So if ever you find yourself there - DESIST - HOLD ON, WAIT, BE CONTINENT but NEVER, NEVER get out just where the road is straightening out and there is a bit of a parking space - just hold on until you can safely stop further down the road!!!  Other than that the road through the mountains was very pleasant.   And on arriving in Turpan there in the hotel compound was another John's Cafe (see entry for 27th December) where I met a delightful French couple from Marseille. 

We went off grockelling on 29th - diary reads "Went to visit ancient city of Jiahoe, very hot reacted badly to the heat. At this point I lost a lovely silk hat that I had recently bought and was still recovering from the illness, antibiotics, etc., was feeling down and I note "Am beginning to think longingly of home - Another 4½ weeks - I long to have some time on my own. Finding constantly being with people very wearing." But the next entry on a happier note reads - "City was fascinating- Lots of mud brick buildings - now ruined but outlines still visible and [something illegible even to me!] across on top of a hill between 2 rivers. Dates from BC to early CEs. Buddhist temples but no sign of Islam so deserted before then." And here are the photos of Jiahoe.

I managed to wait until this space was empty of school children!

The ruined city as it is now ...............

but you might imagine it as it was once with a caravan, carrying silks, metal wares, precious stones, carpets, glass, dried fruit, exotic delicacies and many other things winding its way up the street from the gate having braved the crossing of the Taklamakan Desert ..........



......... as busy messengers, puffed up with self-importance, make their way along the narrow streets with tablets or documents from one government department to another.



But by now these once proud buildings have weathered away.

After the morning spent at Jiahoe the next port of call was the Karez System, my diary reads- "Then went to look at the underground water system - karez - which are like the qanats of Yazd.  They brought water (snow melt) from the Tien Shan to Turpan - they are a prodigious feat of mining through rocks - making channels to carry the water.  The museum was very well laid out (better than Yazd) & gave good descriptions (Uighur/ Chinese/English) & also models with real water.  There are little circular depressions across the desert (like at Yazd) so that it is possible to plot a karez as it makes its way down off the hills.  The disturbing thing is that there is less snow fall each year and Turpan is completely dependent on the karez water systems.  Also as an underground part of the museum showing  a working karez.  The water looked clean and clear."   I met up again with the couple from Marseille and we had a longer talk in mixed French/English.  They made similar observations to myself about the Uyghur situation.  We discussed the insistence that the Uyghur learn Chinese, and I note "..... coming from the UK I can well understand this as to how we dealt with our linguistic minorities - very similar.  Although there are a great deal of bilingual signs there are also many in Chinese only."  Following this entry there is a description of some street eating- ".... Chinese first for deep fried veg/chicken- Then noodle dumplings from a Uighur stall.  Always v. gratifying when the stall holders appreciate my poor Uighur - but now can say "goodbye" (her kosh)!  Went into a Chinese pharmacy and saw a bat on a stick.  Delightful meals - the city all very vibrant and a couple of guys at the next table taking photos of us!! in a very friendly and pleasant way.  I have found people very accepting here.  A very pleasant day all round apart from the hat."  So obviously the low mood of the morning had lifted.

The following photos all appear to be a strange colour - but I can assure you that it is nothing to do with my camera (or your eyes) but the roofing covering the displays was made of green plastic!!!

The first hole is always hardest to sink



... but now that's done (please note rather bored attendant who has seen it all before!)



.... but now they are ready to go underground ...........



... the best way to take out the rocks .............

..... and help is always to hand.



More of Khotan and the North/South link road across the Taklamakan ................

25th May continued.................

According to my diary I spent a pleasant afternoon walking with my room mate and going to markets where I bought a couple of silk scarves - which will by now hopefully be worn by the friends for whom they were bought.  I went for a meal with some of my fellow travellers and this is the description of the meal.  "Delightful meal with G, R & J, M, M & self.  M organised our meal by using our "crib sheet".  It was delicious apart from the chicken knuckles - which I think we all agreed was a bit naff - the seasoning was OK but there really is not much meat on a chicken knuckle.  Pork with ginger, potatoes & chinese leaves, a beef dish and the famous "fish tasting" pork which was not fish tasting at all but rather hot- (Sichuan [sic] style) & an egg plant stew which was also delicious.  Back to hotel to the strains of Colonel Bogey (very tinny and continuous!) - which according to G, played until 0200 - of this I was unaware."  "Colonel Bogey" was some piped music, I think from some sort of a merry-go-round in the main square below our window.  I also note about the Chairman Mao statue (yes, another one!) I saw in the main square just outside our hotel.  "Chairman Mao statue in main square shaking hands with a Uighur leader or representative of the Uighur.  CM towers over the Uighur - has the Uighur's hand firmly grasped - ie. "I have the power - you are in my hand"  The hand shaking the Uighur's hand appears to be cast bigger than CM's other hand by his side- all v. subtle but a strong message all the same as CM depicted as much bigger that the Uighur & the Uighur is looking very grateful."  So the power of political images and the messages they give.  Thirty four years after his death every city still has a statue of him.  In the Central Asian countries one had to look really hard at times to see Lenin, if there was one at all - and I only saw one of Marx - not Osh but one of the first places we visited in Kyrgyzstan.

We left Khotan on the morning of the 26th and this was the first time that I had been in a position to see the early morning Tai Chi in the main square.  I am sure that it happened in Kashgar and I certainly heard the wake-up music over the loudspeakers but round the Seman Hotel was not really a Tai Chi sort of place and probably not a Tai Chi sort of population!  So here are a few snaps - slightly blurred because I was high up in the hotel overlooking the main square and also I was using "zoom".

Early morning in Khotan

Tai Chi to wake up

and everybody is at it .............

 

& dogs do Tai Chi too!  And very obligingly there is piped musak to do the exercises to!

This is the statue that I refer to.  My photo of this was not good enough to post however Phil Colley, Chief Caravaneer at The Oriental Caravan (http://www.theorientalcaravan.com/) has kindly given permission to use the one from their website.

 

Gives a little hint about the pollution levels.  You can make out the statue on a plinth in front of the white building with the windows on the left hand side of the photo.

So leaving Khotan behind we headed off to cross the Taklamakan Desert from South to North.  When Charles Blackmore wrote his account of crossing the Taklamakan in 1993 the road that we took had not even been built (see Charles Blackmore - The Worst Desert on Earth - a fascinating account of endurance by a British/Chinese/Uyghur exploration team who set out to cross the Taklamakan desert mainly on foot but also with the support of some camels.)    There are huge reserves of natural gas and petrol to the north of the Taklamakan and probably underneath it as well.  So as such it is a strategic resource for China which also explains the political difficulties with the Uyghur people who do not see themselves as Chinese at all and furthermore that that they belong in the region and the Chinese do not.

See the following links for more information:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taklamakan_Desert

http://maps.google.co.uk/maps?hl=en&rlz=1T4GGLL_en-GBGB358GB358&q=taklamakan+desert&um=1&ie=UTF-8&sa=N&tab=wl

We travelled along the road to the south of the Taklamakan through lots of small towns in the oases which skirt the desert.  Photos taken through Archie's windows and rather dirty at that!  But I should not complain there were days when I was on "window washing duty" and they were dirty!  Very hard to keep Archie's windows clean with all the dust in the desert.

                      Desert Landscapes



A typical Uyghur farm on the outskirts of a village




Oasis landscape



Back in the desert on the edge of an oasis. 
(If you look carefully behind the vegetation there are what look like piles of earth.  These are a karez (known as kanats in Iran)  or underground irrigation system  but more of these later when I get to Turfan.

My diary for 26th May reads:

"Left Khotan and headed out in the desert.  Lots of small towns in oases.  Stopt. for lunch and a group came to see what we were doing & a man offered us green dates.  Then into the everchanging desert.  The road north is fascinating.  A wide strip either side is regularly irrigated with pumping stations every 5k.  2 of the pumping station men joined us for our night camp.  The sat with us and chatted through John (our guide) J (fellow traveller & farmer) asked them a lot of questions about the upkeep of the road and the irrigation system.  They were happy to share information and I suppose gratified that we took such an interest in what could be a very lonely job."  As the pumping stations was a government scheme the men working them were state employees and Han Chinese - not Uyghur. 

I also write a bit about the desert; "Sand blew into the tent until everything was covered in a fine layer of sand - The sand blow always seems to co-incide with us leaving the truck!  As soon as we set up cook group the wind starts up carrying the sand.  The Taklamakan is a desert desert - sand dunes which shift & change shape like huge hills with wind ripples all over them.  The road north has pumping stations every 5k & irrigation pipes the whole way along & is lined with bushes in a band about 15/20 feet wide.  This is to keep the road open so that there is access to the oil fields & natural gas fields further north.  There is a gas pipe installation about 1/2 way along the road as there is a gas field.  The road after Hotan was atrocious but is being upgraded into a 4 lane highway.  This means that it will far easier to access into the Uighur Autonomous Region - such as military or Chinese influences.  Also far easier access to the rather unstable border- ie. Pakistan, Afghanistan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, etc.  But it must also have and impact on the Uighur who may feel somewhat threatened - as up to now the poor communications s of the Taklamakan may have helped to keep some degree of distance from China.  As we move eastward the Chinese appear more in numbers & Uighur less.  Although there is a great emphasis on the surface on Uighur culture." 

There were also some jokes about the quality of the sand in the Taklamakan for it must not be forgotten that the Chinese use the desert near Lop to try out various nuclear tests - and in travel terms Lop is not that far from the Taklamakan and as the winds blow I, along with all my fellow travellers, probably inhaled some leftovers from various testings.  But despite this I would not have not gone through the Taklamakan for the world.

                    Some more desert landscapes

The Taklamakan Desert - a desert's desert - sand and dunes



The irrigation band complete with pipes!



One of the many pumping stations as we whisked past



And another one hidden behind the bushes.

And a third one - high on a hill.





Leaving Kashgar and "the worst desert on earth"............

The diary entry for 24th May reads:

"Left Kashgar in morning - drive to Yarkand to look @ Mosque but not able to go in as prayer time.  Lunch went down well - Group liked the salad and salad dressing.  (I seem to remember a tomato and mushroom salad with a garlic salad dressing) Then more driving - found camp in Taklamakan desert - meal cook - success - lots of fruit.  But the dust.  Fortunately had meal before the dust storm - watched it come in the tent in clouds - settled everywhere.  Very hot all the night - sweated so much."  Followed by a diary entry for 25th which reads "Decided I do not like desert camping - when I awoke @ 0530 the clock was covered in sand.  Everything was so gritty - Worked all the way through from 0600-0800 cooking - prep - etc..........."  
Just reading that now brings back the journey.  I took an executive decision not to take my camera out while in the desert, except for a few taken through the window while going along in Archie so I don't have many pictures of the Taklamakan desert.   I did not want sand in my camera.  When I was little on holiday at Wells next the Sea, on the north Norfolk coast, where there are huge expanses of sand when the tide has gone out  I have the memory of walking back to the beach from the sea across this seemingly endless sand and crying as the wind blew the sand against my legs.  It stung like 1000s of simultaneous pin pricks.  And if I put my towel around my waist to cover my legs then my shoulders got cold, we are talking about an English summer in the 1950s here!  It was misery.  I have often revisited this memory when I walk across wide expanses of sand with a sharp wind blowing; laughing to myself about the delicate juvenile skin on my legs that suffered so much and saying to myself that how, now I am adult (?) I can take it .......... or that was until I visited the Taklamakan!  And all of a sudden I was back into that child state with exactly the same sensations of sand whipping up against my now adult skinned legs and it still felt as though I was being stung by 1000s of simultaneous pin pricks!  And as to the grit - I remember my grandmother on one of these Norfolk holidays saying how the sand always got in the sandwiches and even got in the tomato juice (of the bottled variety). And if sand can get in a closed bottle of tomato juice it can certainly get in a camera! So imagine the morning cook with sand blowing.     It was early morning when we started getting the tables and chairs out, it was barely light, trying to be as quiet as possible so as not to wake the "happy campers"!  We were still stumbling around wearing head torches.  It was grey, though I must admit I cannot remember if there was a pre-dawn cold I have a feeling it was a pre-dawn mugginess- as I refer to being "very hot all night" but what I do remember is the greyness and the sun coming up through a haze of sand.  And trying to keep the breakfast we prepared from having a layer of sand deposited on it before we had a chance to eat it!  I think this campsite might have been the one where apparently lorries passed by all night right by the tents - but if they did I did not hear them despite my remarks about being hot and sweaty in the night! Interestingly enough it seemed that we would arrive in a seemingly sandless spot only to find that as soon as we got the cooking equipment out we were in a sandstorm!  When we got to Khotan we found - not the rather racketty and run down Khotan with a rebel army described by Ella Maillart and Peter Fleming some 75 years before - but a rather disappointingly slick modern city with high rise building, streetlights, pavements and tarmac roads. 

The Silk Factory in Khotan



Spinning the threads is women's work




but dyeing the silk is men's work,



as is tying the dyed threads into the pattern.



Weaving is done by women or men



using a technology that has proved good for maybe 1000s of years,



with results as sophisticated as any



modern machine woven fabric.



How to get rid of "germs" Chinese style

This is the story of going to hospital in Kashi.  Somethings the Chinese do better than the NHS and others they do differently.  As you might have gathered since Kyrgyzstan there were references to not feeling too good and by the time I got to Kashi something needed to be done as I was suffering one of the worst upper respiratory tract infections (URTI) I have ever had in my life.  So rather than going camping up the Karakorum Highway and over to Tashkurgan and nearly into Pakistan I stayed behind at the hotel and went to hospital instead.  However I was not the only one in need of hospital treatment as another traveller called "L"  had bronchitis, so the 2 of us, with great disappointment, sadly waved off the others, "the Karakorum 18", and Archie in the morning, for 3 nights adventure in Archie while we made our way to the hospital.  As John, our guide for China, was with us we became the "Kashgar 3" But our consolation prize was seeing Chairman Mao every morning on our way to the hospital.



With a suitably sombre sky behind him.

Once at the hospital I don't suppose that "L" and I had to wait more than about 20 minutes before being ushered in to see a doctor.  She did the usual things, listened to chests, looked at throats, say "ahhh", etc. all of this being relayed back to her in Chinese by John, although the doctor was Uyghur.   When she asked me the colour of my "expectorations" and when I told her the colour she looked very impressed (I did say it was one the worst or possibly the worst UTRI ever) or she did not believe me!!!  After this we were sent upstairs for a blood test.  Again this was done with minimum wait.  We found ourselves in a  ward with a large nurses station behind perspex windows, and in the windows there were lots of little holes a bit like a booking office at a train station.  Looking around to see what other people were doing, we knew, when our turn came to stick our arms into the "ticket office".  The needle was put in and blood taken and this was tested immediately and a few minutes later, armed with a printout of results we were back down to see the doctor.  All in the space of about another 20 minutes.  The doctor assessed the results of the blood test and made out a prescription there and then.  Back upstairs again to pay for the prescriptions - I think my whole treatment came to about £30 or £35.  The prescriptions came as 3 small bottles of antibiotic and 3 larger bottles of glucose/saline solutions.  We then presented ourselves at the treatment ward where we sat down in one of the chairs round the edge of the room and took stock.  The ceiling had a track running around the whole ward and suspended from this were lots of brackets.  The nurses mixed the antibiotic into one of the solutions and then put a needle in the back of the hand and slowly drip fed the antibiotic intravenously - only I found out how to make the solution go in quicker by fiddling with the control mechanism while the nurses were not looking!  But even with that it took about 3 or 4 hours to get the antibiotic in.  So that gave plenty of time for observation and reflection.  One of the things that "L" and I noticed and commented on was the cultural division in the ward.  As the ward was large and as the nursing station was central it made a natural divide in the ward with two separate areas although still an open ward.  "L" and I found ourselves in the "Uyghur" half of the ward, where there were more patients than the "Chinese" end on the other side of the nursing station.   The ward was none too clean when the dirty dish rag came out to wipe down the surfaces I felt like bringing in some jay cloths!  But the nurses could not be faulted they were incredibly kind and helpful despite the language difficulties (I had my Central Asian and Turkish phrase books with me to help us along but we had lots of smiles from other patients as well) but   The next couple of days it was the same procedure but we were clued up by this time and asked for a bed in a side ward (at 10yuan roughly equivalent to £1) and were able to lie down.  Perhaps because we were not locals we each got a bed each rather than sharing as some others appeared to do.  I found it a very aggressive way of delivering antibiotics but it really did the trick.  We really broke the rules on the last day by bringing in a "thank-you" box of biscuits for sharing in the nursing station - but not allowing for communist (or Chinese?) culture where any sort of tipping or acknowledgment such as a box of biscuits is an absolute no-no.  They refused to take them and in the end we left them by the beds and I don't know if they were eaten - I hope so.

One of the interesting exchanges we had at this time was with a young man we met who had worked as a tour guide.  His English was good and we were able to pick up quite a bit about the political situation in Xinxiang Province (or (Uyghur Autonomous Region) where the Uyghur are the majority population.  Although a significant physical area of Xinxiang is covered the Taklamakan Desert (named by Charles Blackmore as "The Worst Desert in the World) there are also very rich mineral, natural gas and petrol reserves which contribute significantly to the Chinese economy.  And therefore Xinxiang Province is of great importance to China both economically and politically.  He told us how the Old City in Kashgar was being destroyed, the old houses pulled down and the former residents are moved into high rise flats.  He explained that this was "government" policy.  When I asked where the "government" was based, as Xinxiang is an "Autonomous" Region first of all he said "Urumqi" and then "Beijing".  His distress and anger as he talked to us became more apparent with each explanation.  The mud brick houses, which have stood for hundreds of years are deemed "unsafe" and therefore have to be pulled down - but there is more to it than that.  There has been unrest in Xinxiang Province over the last years and particularly in Urumqi as the Uygher try to express their protest at what is being done to their lifestyle and culture.    The overall emotion at the siutuation he finds himself in that I picked up from this young man was an overwhelming sense of powerlessness and abandonment.  "L" was much more up to date on this whole situation than I was at the time as she had seen a programme on the television about the Old City in Kashgar.  I enclose a few links which explain this far better than I can and a few of the photos that I took in the Old City.  And who knows as the destruction is happening on such a scale that the streets where I took these photographs may no longer exist - and that is since May this year. 

http://www.farwestchina.com/2010/09/what-remains-of-kashgars-old-city.html  http://www.guardian.co.uk/travel/2009/aug/08/china-silk-road-kashgar-heritage



Photos from the Old City taken 23rd May 2010

 



Old City street scene



A playground within the ruins .................

I am not sure what happens with all of this ............

Houses disappear ..............

And whole streets ..................

And if the front door looks like this I wonder what it might have been like inside?



Life goes on in the Old City .... but for how much longer?

 More photos of Kashgar



The wonderful exuberant and utterly ....



"over the top" silks in ..............

Kashgar Sunday market.

More street scenes in the Old City



The Mosque and main square ..............



in the Old City

 

What happened next - the road to Kashgar or Kashi........................

"Over the Torugart Pass- No difficulties though took things slowly - Complete change of scenery - Though still in the Tien Shan.  The rocks very dramatic, arid, harsh and at times quite threatening.  Wind storms in the valley.  A wide stony river bed with hardly any water in it and by the end of summer it will be a trickle, if that.  The contrast between the 2 sides of the border is dramatic.  The houses are similar in the mountains but otherwise everything else is subtly different.  The Uighurs have similar facial diversity to the Kyrgyz & maybe more so.  I have seen people in Kashgar who could be Mediterranean or middle Eastern or Balkan as well as Central Asian.  But the think I noticed instantly was the lack of horses.  The sheep/goats graze on the side of hills or by the roadside but mostly they appeared to be left to their own devices r/t [rather than] managed by a man (or woman) on horseback.   In fact the whole time coming down the pass I only saw 1 horse - several donkeys but apart from that one - not a single horse."  So reads my first "China" diary entry (19th May).  Customs was a strange experience.  All the customs officers appeared to be young Chinese soldiers, (as opposed to Uyghur) doing national service I imagine, and posted to what must seem the outer end of China.  So the arrival of a "tourist" truck rather than the usual heavy goods lorries must have been a welcome diversion.  We were all unloaded and had to take back packs of the Archie back locker and pass them through a mobile scanning unit.  All things went well and without a hitch except for 2 of the party who were obviously the "chosen ones" for the day.  Their possessions were gone through with a toothcomb.  And the toothcomb included nearly confiscating a small Persian miniature painted on camel bone that they had bought in Isfahan.  But the point of issue was not that it was painted on camel bone (and therefore a banned animal product) but that it was a military scene - depicting a battle fought maybe 4 or 5 hundred years ago between the Persians and an unknown possibly Central Asian foe.  The reason given for this was that it was against regulations to bring representations of war or battles into China.  Heigh ho, the ridiculous rules and regulations!!!  My diary reads "They are probably all Han & very much in an alien culture - sort of foreigners in their own country - only its not......"  They did not look in the truck at all nor did the customs post down the road (well quite a few hours) although they scanned our bags from the back locker again.  So the day bags, laptops and cameras left on the truck remained undisturbed.  Including the undiscovered autobiography of the DaliL's sister which was in the truck library!  So what with me inadvertently taking a book with a Salman Rushdie introduction into Iran, a copy of Craig Murray's Murder in Uzbekistan (a really good read and very revealing of the politics and allegiances in the run up to the Iraq War) going around the truck in Uzbekistan and now the DL's sister's book into China we were not doing too badly in the "banned" literature department!  There was very much a Central Asian feel to that first day (apart from the lack of horses) and it still felt like travelling through the "Stans".  As noted all the officials were Chinese but the population most definitely were not.  Diary read "..... Long, long drive town to Kashgar to the Seman Hotel.  What a place, apart from the decorative plasterwork over the porch having obviously collapsed a few minutes before we arrived - it was all that could be asked.  The room would not be out of place in Mad Ludwig's castle (Neuschwanstein).  The ceiling is picked out in shades of pale pinks, green and blue with Rococo plasterwork picked out in glitter blues, yellows, red, greens, etc.  The cornice is pierced tracery - also picked out in glitter.  Likewise there are wall panels in similar style.  It has become a photo opportunity - It is a pity that I was feeling so awful throughout."  And here it is.............................



And OH JOY & DELIGHT - not only these wonderful, exuberant decorations to admire but our old friend Nasruddin the Hodja on his donkey (wrong way though - facing forward) right outside the hotel!

I completely forgot to mention that wonderful Silk Road institution known as John's Cafe, to be found in the same compound as the Seman Hotel where I went for all my meals.  http://www.johncafe.net/  This splendid cafe was ably run by John himself and the great thing was that for the next few hotel stops we found a John's Cafe at each one.