The Silk Road (Sort Of) Overland
Saturday 20 August 2011

Flying with the Airbus 380 was fabulous! What a plane!! The take-off at Beijing was absolutely awesome, and the flight was very smooth and the economy seats surprisingly comfortable, with decent legroom. And the in-flight entertainment on Emirates is, as always, second to none. I watched Unknown with Liam Neeson (quite good). This plane is not used on many routes yet, but if I ever get a chance to fly on one again, I'll take it.

The contrast between the no-seat Chinese train ride between Turpan and Xi'an and the flight on the Airbus 380 last night couldn't have been greater. The Airbus is not exactly in the spirit or style of the ancient Silk Road merchants and their caravans, but perhaps a bit of a treat after some of the modes of transport I've tried over the past seven weeks.

I'm extremely pleased I've been able to make this Silk Road journey this summer, and I also feel it's been a privilege, since I now have both the time and the resources to do it (I had neither five-six years ago). This region has opened up to independent travel very recently, and maybe going back only five years, it would have been more difficult than it was for me.

It's true that quite a few issues have come up over these seven weeks - refused visas, delayed visas, fully booked trains for weeks ahead - and it's also true that several times I have very nearly thrown in the towel and almost booked a ticket back to Dubai, or perhaps to Thailand or somewhere where I could just relax and do nothing. However, with some changes to the route and by changing the means of transport sometimes, e.g. my flight from Actau to Almaty in Kazakhstan, I've been able to keep to the spirit of my Silk Road project, if not exactly to my original planned route. Also, at times, a few words from a friend have made the difference between giving up and carrying on.

Looking at my Silk Road route in its entirety, now after the event, I feel that even my ambition of doing the entire journey overland has more or less been fulfilled. There is obviously nothing "overland" about flying the two thousand kilometres between Actau, on the Caspian Sea, and Almaty, not far from the Chinese border (instead of the intended 67 hour train ride). However, when I then had to re-route and travel back west - all the way to Khiva in western Uzbekistan and then back east again - I kind of "undid" all of that flying when I travelled those distances on Uzbek trains.

My Silk Road project has been great fun. It's been a very hands-on, a very visual and real lesson in history, religion, art and culture - covering a huge area and spanning over two millennia. And above all, I've seen so many incredibly beautiful sights that I will need time to just digest it all.

Following the Silk Road - the medieval Internet, the medieval Super Information Highway - is definitely worth the effort and all the hassles.

The Silk Road (Sort Of) Overland
Thursday 18 August 2011

The train was meant to arrive in Xi'an eighteen minutes past midnight. However, we were running a bit late and we didn't arrive at Xi'an train station until nearly 2.00AM.

For the last couple of hours on the Xi'an train, I got help from three other university students. The issue was this. My suitcase was still in carriage 15, my original stand-only carriage, but the sleeper seat I had been allocated was in carriage 7. The conductor in carriage 7 wasn't sure what the best way of getting to my bag would be - going back to carriage 15 and collecting it before arriving, or running along the platform once we arrived in Xi'an. It might seem like a minor issue, but if the rail company allows for twenty stand-only tickets for each carriage, that means I potentially have to pass 140 passengers standing in the aisles with my suitcase.

As I said, three university students got involved and offered to help. One student was not very good at speaking English, but produced these messages written in perfect English on pieces of paper. This process of communication was a bit slow, but in the end it was decided one of the students would go with me to collect the suitcase. Well, after a couple of carriages, we realised it wouldn't work. Because it was well after midnight, people had kind of settled down and were now sitting or lying in the aisles, and there were many more than twenty no-seat people in each carriage. Maybe twice times that number! There was a carpet of people covering the aisles, and there was no way I was going to get my suitcase through seven carriages.

After more discussions via written notes, it was then decided that two of the students would walk through the train with me until we reached carriage 15 and then stay we me there until we got to Xi'an. What a walk! I had to disrupt the sleep or rest of maybe a couple of hundred people. Super embarrassing! My friendly helpers kept telling me not to worry and I was pretty happy I had people with me at this stage.

When we finally arrived at carriage 15, we were met by a wall of people all trying to get their suitcases/boxes/bundles to the door because they were all getting off at Xi'an, too. What total and utter chaos!! However, Harry, my earlier helper, was there and told me to sit in his seat until the chaos had subsided - which it did eventually.

This train journey did not turn out as I had anticipated, but one thing is for sure - I will never forget this train journey for as long as I live.

After less than three hours of sleep, I was ready to do a tour of Xi'an. Not feeling very perky I must say, I went to the tourist office in the hotel and booked a full day's tour, including a visit to the terracotta warriors. While the tour operator was filling in the required forms, I was chatting to her about my travels so far. The funny thing was that she didn't seem to know where Kashgar was, and she seemed genuinely mystified as to why ANYBODY would go to Turpan. "To see what?" she asked. Well, the 2,000+ year-old Silk Road treasures in western China are obviously not known to everybody in the tourist industry here in China.

I ended up in a group of eight tourists and a tour guide by the name of Feven, who claimed he was one of only twenty English-speaking tour guides in Xi'an, which meant he worked from 4.00AM - 11.00PM seven days a week all summer.

Feven's lack of sleep didn't mean he was a low-energy guy. No, he was at it from the very start, and he had this preacher's approach. He introduced each set of information by saying, "You need to know three things. First..." Also, he kept repeating sections of almost every sentence two or three times, "The terracotta warriors were found under the sand, under the sand, under the sand." Maybe this is from earlier feedback that people couldn't hear him very well or something. Or maybe it's a Chinese thing. Feven also had this typical Chinese manner of kind of preparing for each utterance - like preparing for a long jump or similar - and then delving into the words quite loud (at least that is one thing I've picked up over the past week).

Following in Feven's footsteps, we've seen three things today: the BoPo Museum with a number of 6,000 year old settlements (I didn't even know there was such a thing until today), the terracotta warriors and he tomb of Emperor Qin Shi Huang.

The terracotta warriors obviously overshadow everything else in Xi'an, these over 8,000 life-sized warriors that were discovered underground in 1974 by a farmer. Our guide Feven said there might be as many as 20,000, but digging them out is a very time-consuming and expensive job. The warriors were made around 240-200BC and every single warrior is unique, and having been protected underground, they are all like new. Absolutely stunning. My thinking now is if you are going to China and you only have time to see one single thing, see the terracotta army in Xi'an.

Just a quick note about Xi'an. When I arrived, I saw a McDonald's and a KFC as soon as I got out of the train station. Later, I saw a Starbucks and a Dairy Queen. What is this? Is this China? It's certainly not the China I've got to know over the past seven days. In Kashgar, Kuche and Turpan, I had problems finding anything resembling a normal supermarket (found one in Turpan), not to mention a cafe (managed to find one in Kashgar only). To go from that to being able to order black tea with milk at Starbucks, is a world apart. The west of China is obviously very different from central and eastern China I realise now.

In the evening, I walked along the "Islamic Walking Street" in the Old Town (fabulous street, great vibe) and I also went to the Great Mosque, originally founded in 747AD. I happened to arrive during the sunset prayers, when Muslims are breaking their fast during Ramadan. It was dark, so I couldn't see that many details inside the mosque compound (I must go back there tomorrow!) but the chanting was beautiful, and it was easy to imagine what it would have been like during the Silk Road heydays to see Muslims breaking their fast during Ramadan.

Tomorrow is my last day in China. I'm flying to Being mid-afternoon and then on to Dubai around midnight. The one thing that I just have to do tomorrow is to find the very spot where the Silk Road used to start. The Western Market in Xi'an is long gone, but I've heard there is a monument where it used to be, and I want to go there to complete my Silk Road project properly - going from the Grand Bazaar in Istanbul to the (former) Western Market in Xi'an. If I can fit in a second visit to the Grand Mosque and also see the Big Wild Goose Pagoda, constructed 652AD, so much the better.