The Silk Road (Sort Of) Overland
Friday 19 August 2011

I managed to find the exact spot where the Silk Road used to start in Xi'an this morning, and I also saw the Big Wild Goose Pagoda. However, I ran out of time and I wasn't able to visit the Grand Mosque a second time, which was a shame.

The Western Market in Xi'an was the beginning of the Silk Road in medieval times. This is where the caravans carrying silk and other goods started their journeys westward. This was where the traders setting out from the Grand Bazaar in Istanbul finally arrived. So, when I have now finally arrived at the end point of my eastbound Silk Road journey, Xi'an in China, I just needed to tie up one last loose end, namely to find this Western Market, which now no longer exists. The Silk Road starting point is not one of the major sights for visitors coming to Xi'an, but it's known and marked on city maps, so it wasn't particularly hard to find it.

The Silk Road starting point turned out to have this gigantic caravan of camels, traders and goods - a 30 metre long statue made of stone. Very fitting. I took maybe 40 pictures here and then I felt this summer's travelling project was complete. Mission accomplished.

Before I had to catch the airport bus, I had enough time to see the Big Wild Goose Pagoda, one of the major sights in Xa'na, and having been built in 652AD, it's very much a Silk Road site.

Climbing the pagoda itself was great, but I think it was seeing all the (by now very familiar Silk Road) patterns and designs in the ceilings and on the walls of all the Buddhist temples hare that I found so interesting.

 They were the same type of Silk Road patterns I had fund in the mosques and mausoleums in Bukhara and Samarkand. It's fascinating to see how certain patterns and designs travelled along the whole of the Silk Road and spread that way, especially the way the very same patterns were used both in mosques and temples alike.

On the bus on my way to Xi'an Airport, I very much had this feeling of mission accomplished. Yay, I did it! In spite of all the hiccups and issues that came up along the way, I did travel from Istanbul and Xi'an.

As I was sitting on the bus, I also kind of pondered a bit on one of the things that they had said in the Discovery Channel Silk Road travel book, my faithful companion along the way, and that is how the Silk Road was the mediaeval equivalent of the Internet. It was the Information Super Highway of the past, where goods, ideas, food, traditions, religious beliefs etc. travelled back and forth and spread as a result. Thinking about it, Silk Road would be the perfect name for any new up-and-coming web browser.

The fight to Beijing was uneventful. I very much enjoyed having my very own assigned seat, though as we were boarding, I was wondering to myself whether they would allow for a few standing passengers.

At midnight, I'll be taking the Emirates flight to Dubai. The aircraft is the brand new super jumbo Airbus 380, and I'm very excited about this flight. I've seen it at the gate. This plane is gigantic!

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.

The Silk Road (Sort Of) Overland
Wednesday 17 August 2011

I've spent the entire 24 hours of today on the train to Xi'an. A university student who calls himself Harry - after Harry Potter - has offered to help me in many ways. For example, he's several times asked on my behalf about the possibility of getting an unclaimed bed if available, and by 6.00 PM today he was successful, and I was able to lie down for a few hours after having sat on the same seat in the restaurant car for over 20 hours. It was bliss!

This is the second time a young Chinese student has offered to help me on a train - not just cursory, but REALLY help. Maybe university students feel more obliged to help because they are the only ones there able to speak English, and therefore help a poor non-Chinese speaking foreigner like me? Or maybe these guys are angels sent to help me? An angel called Harry.

The system of paying a minimum charge at the restaurant car in order to stay there is a good idea. I'm paying USD 5.00 or thereabouts every few hours (each time I get a bag of snacks I don't eat) and can therefore sit at my restaurant table for as long as I like. The price has been set at a level so not too many people are using this option (maybe twenty out of forty restaurant seats are taken up by "permanents"), and no restaurant visitors seem to be turned away because we are taking up the space.

The "rules" are OK as well. You are allowed to sleep with your head on the table (or any other way you can make yourself comfortable) between midnight and 6.00AM, as they lock the doors to the restaurant car over that time and it's closed. You can also sleep with your head on the table between lunch and dinner, when there are no customers.

The alternatives - for a stand-only train passenger - are these. First of all, the aisle is available to you in the sense that you can sit on the floor, perhaps using one of those mini-collapsable low seats, or you can stand/lie in the aisle, all until someone wants to walk past you - which is all the time. So, to travel like this for 23 hours would make most people go potty. A second alternative is to stand/sit in the area next to the exit doors, where're all the smokers are. The advantage is that, if you've got an hour to the next station and you've managed to get the spot directly by the door, you don't have to move for an hour. A third alternative is to befriend someone who is sitting where there are three seats in a row: here it is possible to squeeze in a fourth person without it being too uncomfortable - but you have to be invited. The fourth way of dealing with this to pretend this is all a great party and just stand around in the aisle, chatting to people, joking, laughing and having fun. This is the option most people seem to go for, to avoid going absolutely potty I presume. In my estimate, they seem to sell up to twenty stand-only tickets for each carriage in the train, so with nineteen carriages, it's quite a party.

But, as I said, I utilised the restaurant car option. I like parties, but I'm not a party animal, and 23 hours of chatting in the aisle of a train is a tad too much for me. And thanks to my new Chinese friend Harry, I got nearly six hours of sleep, lying in a top bunk bed in a "hard sleeper" carriage - not meaning it's hard, but that the car is like an open dormitory. The bed was fine, and I had clean sheets and a lovely duvet.

This is a nice respite - tomorrow is the only full day I've got in Xi'an so I better be awake and perky then.

The Silk Road (Sort Of) Overland
Tuesday 16 August 2011

Again, this has has been another really amazing day. Following the Silk Road, you don't really need anybody to organise a spectacular tour for you: you just find a list of any Silk Road-related sights in the area and you're set.

This morning, my taxi driver (who arrived at my hotel on time to pick me up) first took me to the ancient ruins of Gaochang, a city dating back to the second century BC. It was absolutely spectacular to walk through these ruins stretching more than a kilometre, looking almost like a moon landscape, and ending with this amazing large Buddhist monastery. I'm also so happy I saw Subashi site outside Kuche two days ago, because it allowed me to be amazed by it then, and then be blown away by this site this morning.

Next, we went to the Bezeklik Thousand Buddha Caves, situated next to this gorgeous gorge and dating back to the fourth to the tenth century. Only about five caves out of an original 67 caves were open to visitors, and photography was strictly prohibited - just like at the Buddha caves outside Kuche two days ago - but this was still an incredibly interesting and worthwhile sight to visit. Though, when I tried to count the rows of Buddha paintings in the ceiling of one of the caves I visited, I got nearer to 750 than 1,000 (the reason I counted was that the sign in each cave said "One thousand Buddhas in the ceiling").

It's sad to see how most of the wall paintings have been taken away by European archaeologists, yet still quite a few remain. It's also sad to see how almost all the faces of the remaining paintings have been destroyed or erased. My Discovery Channel travel guide says that in the case of this site, it was the Red Guards during the Cultural Revolution in the 60s and 70s who defaced these Buddha paintings, while in the case of the Buddha paintings in the caves outside Kuche, it was when the local population converted to Islam in the thirteenth century that those Buddha paintings were defaced (or later on).

The impact of looking into the ceiling of a cave and seeing maybe only five out of 750 Buddha paintings NOT having been defaced is quite something. I can really feel the anger and rage of the people who did it - whether for political or religious reasons - and it just saddens me. I'm not a Buddhist, but the idea of people destroying images that are considered holy by another religion is incomprehensible to me. It reminds me of the customs official in Saudi Arabia who confiscated an icon from an Indian guy in front of me in the queue. After he confiscated it, he took out a large knife and defaced the icon right in front of the Indian guy. I that case, I could understand the tremendous emotional impact it would have had on this Indian Christian. In this case, I might not feel the emotional impact this ceiling must have on Buddhists visiting this site, but it still saddens me a great deal (as do the cartoons of the Prophet Mohamed).

After a visit to Grape Valley - where the girl offering people different types of local Chinese wine didn't understand the difference between "sweet" and "dry" - we went to see the Emin Mosque and Minaret, called Sugong Ta in Chinese. A very impressive 44-metre minaret (I wasn't allowed to climb) and a beautiful mosque. The style was very much Central Asian and not Chinese. Very interesting.

However, the sight that really made my visit to Turpin worth it was the last one of the day: the ancient Silk Road (and UNESCO Heritage Site) city Jiaohe. And - again! - I'm happy I had seen Subashi and Gaochang prior to this, because this place really blew my socks off. These are ruins dating back to the second century BC, and where most of the remains are from the fifth and sixth centuries. Totally like a moon landscape, with the most amazing rock formations. But it is the sheer volume of an entire city in ruins that adds something completely new here. If you're ever near Turpan, don't miss this one!

One thing I've discovered today is that the South Koreans are into the Silk Road in a big way. The vast majority of visitors to the sights I've seen today were South Koreans. In fact, I don't think I've seen a single European or American at any of the places I visited today (though obviously quite a few Chinese). Another way this became clear to me was at breakfast this morning. When I arrived five minutes early for breakfast, there were already a hundred or so South Koreans in the dining room having breakfast. Very different from Bukhara, Uzbekistan, where I was the only one having breakfast while being watched by three members of staff. Once the South Koreans discover Uzbekistan, that will change of course.

My next stop is Xi'an, the eastern end-point of the Silk Road and the final destination of my journey, and this summer's travel project. My 27-hour train journey to Xi'an, which started at 9.00 PM this evening, is yet again one where I only could get a stand-only ticket. This time, I have been offered a seat in the restaurant car for the night. For USD 5.00 I can sleep with my head on the restaurant table. They are very pragmatic, the Chinese. I like it.

The Silk Road (Sort Of) Overland
Monday 15 August 2011

I woke up very early as the young guy whose mum had got the unclaimed bed under me seemed to be looking for something on my bed. My instinctive response was that he was trying to steal something. Never in my life have I been more wrong. He was actually putting a gift and a letter on my bed. The gift was a packet of strawberry juice for when I woke up, and the letter was two pages long and had been written on a napkin.

The letter was written in nearly perfect (IELTS 5.5-ish) English, where he introduced himself and also explained that he'd become curious when he overheard I was from Sweden and saw that I was travelling on my own through China by train. What an extraordinarily friendly and hospitable gesture towards a complete stranger and fellow passenger! I was quite take aback, and when he came back to check on his mum, we chatted for quite a while. His name was Liu and he's a business student at university.

When we arrived in Turpan, Liu offered to help me buy my next train ticket and find a taxi. Incredibly kind and thoughtful. Buying train tickets can be quite tricky if the ticket sales person doesn't speak a word of English.
Once I arrived in Turpan, I took it easy. The hotel was four-star (we couldn't find any other hotel when the hotel people in Kuche helped me the day before yesterday) and when they said there was no WiFi, I became quite disappointed - but I forgave them instantly when they then said, "But you have your own computer in your room, Sir." Cool! I've never stayed in a hotel with computers in the rooms before, whatever the number of stars. Is this the same China I experienced on the terrible roads crossing the border from Kyrgyzstan?!

My Discovery Channel Silk Road travel book is excellent. They had listed a hotel with a "friendly tour desk" in Turpan, and when I went there, it only took five minutes to organise a comprehensive personal tour of the area in and around Turpan for tomorrow, including pick-up at my hotel and drop-off at the train station (50 km away). Price: USD 65.00. I like China!

The Silk Road (Sort Of) Overland
Sunday 14 August 2011

Everything turned out just fine today. There was an English-speaking girl at the reception this morning and in less than half an hour, I had a Chinese taxi driver knocking on my door, showing me a small notebook with recommendations from earlier customers written in English. What caught my eye instantly was the sentence, "He even helped me getting a train ticket" and I thought, "This is my man!"

My taxi driver turned out to be very resourceful and he was able to show me not just the sights in and near Kuche, but he even included a trip to a place 70 km from Kuche itself. So, today I've seen eight sights for USD75 - very different from the prices I was offered in Kazakhstan!

First I saw the ruins from the ancient capital of the Kingdom of Quici - Subashi Gucheng - from the fourth to the twelfth century. A few minutes later, I saw the 16-metre Kizilgah Beacon Tower, a former garrison point on the northern Silk Road, dating from 206BC-220AD. This was from the Han Dynasty.

Wow! Where can you see two archaeological sights of this kind of quality before it's even time for mid-morning coffee? But that was just the beginning. Next, we drove through Yanshui Gui - Saltwater Gulley - with amazing rock formations on our way to Kezier Qianfo Dong, a Buddhist cave temple complex from the third to the thirteenth century. This is an amazingly beautiful oasis in the middle of the mountainous desert. I got an English-speaking guide who showed me eight of these caves - there used to be 263 caves but now there are only 80 left.

Absolutely fascinating! Some of these caves were completely covered by frescoes of very high quality. Amazing. However, it was a bit difficult to follow what my guide was saying as I could hardly hear any consonants at all - it actually gave her English a bit of a Danish twang - but I got most of it. It took my about half an hour, though, to realise that when she said "pretty", she actually meant "preach" - as in the Buddha preaching.

Back in Kuche, I saw the Friday Market (busy!), the Great Mosque, Qingzhen Da Si (beautiful), some ancient walls from the Qiuci Kingdom and the Mausoleum of Ashidin Khoja (absolutely delightful).

I'm amazed that I've been able to see much more than I had hoped for with my tight schedule. In other words, it's been an absolutely fantastic day.

As I couldn't get a sleeper or even a seat for tonight's journey to Turpan, I had to buy a stand-only ticket. Finding out there were no seats was a bit of a damper this morning. Now, I would find out for myself what it was like to join the seat-less crowd (which I felt sorry for yesterday). A kind station guard wrote a note in Chinese, asking the conductor to check if there wasn't a bed available for me, just before I got on the train. However, when I saw the crowd of people all pushing to reach the conductor's little mini-office when we got on the train, my earlier optimism disappeared. How can you fight for a ticket in a queue if you don't speak one word of Chinese?! I just sat down on a seat a friendly young guy offered me temporarily and chatted with the people around me - or tried to; very few knew any English at all and my best option in this case is to show the map of the Silk Road in my travel book and show people where I've been. Everybody I've tried this with so far have understood.

Suddenly, several people started shouting in my direction. Apparently, the train people had decided to offer me one of the unclaimed beds. I suspect it had something to do with the fact that I was the only European on the train, but I was not going to argue against the decision.

The bed was heavenly. Nice, clean sheets and a lovely, comfy duvet. As I was getting into bed, the unclaimed bed below me was being taken by a lady, whose son spoke to me in fluent (more or less) English.

The Silk Road (Sort Of) Overland
Saturday 13 August 2011

I managed to see the Abakh Khoja Mausoleum this morning before it was time to get to my train. The Abakh Khoja Mausoleum was absolutely fascinating, and very beautiful. It had the same blue tile work I'd seen in Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan, but it also had some of the colours I had seen in Bukhara - orange and dark olive green. What was different was that some of the green and orange tile work was quite basic - just large, plain tiles, which were mixed with the more elaborate tiles in other colours. This mix of elaborate and kind of a rustic, or basic style, is what made this mausoleum so beautiful I think.

It is quite interesting at this stage of my journey to be able to begin to compare the design and ornamentation of different mosques and mausoleums I've seen along the Silk Road. I'm obviously not an expert, but the Silk Road as one single entity is starting to emerge for me. Exciting!

My train journey to Kuche went quite smoothly. Originally, I had planned to go to Aksu, since it was listed as a major city along the old Silk Road, but after I had bought the ticket, I read the fine print: there are no archaeological remains left. So I am extending the journey a few hours and I'll get off in Kuche instead, a small town according to Chinese standards, but it has a lot of interesting stuff to look at.

An immediate and obvious difference between the trains in the Stans and here in China is the security. I had to show my ticket three times before I was allowed to board the train, and my luggage was X-rayed and I had to walk through a metal detector as well. For the train itself, the seats are smaller and they get more passengers into one car, especially since most of the train consisted of two-story cars. However, the air-conditioning is working and they keep cleaning the train every two hours or so by sweeping and mopping the floors - asking the passengers to lift their feet. They apparently allow for train tickets with no seats because there were quite a few passengers who were sitting in the staircases or standing, leaning against the walls. The toilets look a bit scary (squatty-potty style) but they don't really smell. I think they clean them quite frequently. One similarity between the Stans and this train is that we are running later - an hour or so.

I seemed to be the only European on the entire train. No-one spoke to me, though I had quite a few curious kids standing around me at times while I was writing my blog on my iPad, or texting on my iPhone. At one stage, I showed a little boy some pictures on my iPad and suddenly several sections of the car were looking at my pictures from Tashkent as well. They seemed to understand the word Uzbekistan and they were chatting amongst themselves as they saw pictures of the medressas in Tashkent. Most of the passengers seemed to be Uighurs so they obviously understood what kind if monuments they were looking at.

Arriving at the Kuche Hotel just before midnight was quite interesting. I walked up to the reception desk only to discover that none of the three receptionists knew one word of English (except for "no"). Very quickly all three started saying, "No, no!" either loud voices while looking at me. Not the world's most customer-friendly approach to a new hotel guest. Luckily, I had the faxed booking with me in Chinese, arranged by the hotel in Kuche, and when I showed it they suddenly seemed to understand that I actually had a booking. What if I had not had this fax?! Weird situation to have a hotel booking but not being able to convince the receptionist that you do. Anyway, they quickly got an English-speaking person on the line who explained all about the cost of the room, the deposit, breakfast etc.

The room was nice and large, with A/C and satellite TV, but again, not a single channel English. Also, when I showed one of the receptionists the log in page for the WiFi at the hotel, I realised she had no idea what she was looking at. Irritating to have WiFi but not having any hotel staff who knows who knows what WiFi is! With no English TV channels, I can at last listen to the BBC World Service if I've got WiFi - but not this evening. Again, I feel very much cut off from the world.

I also feel a bit apprehensive about tomorrow. My plan is to arrange for a tour of all the Silk Road-related monuments in Kuche and then take the night train to Turpan. What if there is no English-speaking receptionist tomorrow morning? I have this feeling that with planning only one day in Kuche, I might have been over-optimistic. In this part of China, it is apparently not obvious that the top-end hotel in a city has anybody who speaks English.

Well, tomorrow with tell.

The Silk Road (Sort Of) Overland
Friday 12 August 2011

I really like Kashgar a great deal. It has a vibe and a feel I haven't come across since, perhaps, Istanbul. I don't know if I wanted to live in Kars if I was offered a job there. Or Van. Or Tashkent. Or Osh. Or Actau. Almaty perhaps. But one thing is for sure, I could definitely live in Kashgar. Maybe it reminds me a bit of Cairo. The charming chaos, the crazy mix of the past and the present.

After a short sleep, shortened by the two hour time difference and the fact that breakfast finished at 9.30AM, I went back to bed to get the nightmarish taxi journey from last night out if my system before I could face Kashgar. By 1.00 PM I was ready to face the day.

I found a cafe with WiFi opposite the hotel and discovered quickly that Facebook, Xanga and Twitter are all blocked in China. I hadn't really thought about this, or planned for an alternative, so now I'm disconnected from the whole world. This is very annoying! To know that people know where I am and what I'm doing means a lot to me when I'm a solo traveller crossing Asia.

Next, I walked towards the Id Gah Mosque in centre of Kashgar, the main building in the centre of town with a Silk Road past. This mosque is probably the biggest in China and can accommodate up to 20,000 worshippers I've read in one of my travel books.

Now, normally I would not have seen any evidence of Friday Prayers if I was walking past a mosque on a Friday around 3.00PM, but I now understand that the Chinese province Xinjiang operates with two times: the official Beijing time (GMT+8) and "Xinjiang time" (GMT+6), which follows the sun more closely and therefore the Muslim prayer times for this city. So as I was approaching the mosque, I saw a lot of Uighur worshippers carrying their prayer mats, heading for Friday prayers. There are about seven million Uighurs in China and almost all of them live in Xinjiang. They are a Turkic nomadic people who settled in the region in the ninth century and they obviously have a real influence on the feel of a city like Kashgar. In fact, the large number of Uighurs makes my arrival in China a sort of soft start to China as there are a lot of similarities between the Uighurs and the Uzbeks for example.

Tourists are not allowed in the mosque during Friday Prayers of course, so I was kind of circling the square for an hour or so, before people started exiting the mosque. Very interesting. First of all, there were so many worshippers that quite a few were praying in the streets outside. If this mosque can take 20,000 worshippers, does that mean that there were more than that number there today? The square really filled up after Friday Prayers finished and it certainly looked like many thousands to me.

Another interesting fact was that I somehow ended up right next to this guy with a key to a small cupboard located at the edge of the square in front of the mosque. It turned out that he was responsible to collect any knives the Uighur worshippers were carrying before entering the mosque. After Friday Prayer, they simply came up to him with with a number that identified their knife and they got it back. Since there were a lot of knife shops opposite the mosque - and from what I saw in the market later in the day - the knife is culturally important to the Uighurs.

When I finally was allowed in to see the mosque inside, it was beautiful and there was a strong garden feel to it as the different sections for prayer were partitioned by trees. However, I was not allowed to step inside the area at the very front so I couldn't take any photos of the stunning ceiling - only from an angle.

The rest of the day was fun. I took masses of photos of the Old Town, next to the mosque. I also took a moped-driven type of of mini truck/taxi that took about ten passengers to the main market, the Yengi Bazaar - which was this huge, crazy place.

Tomorrow, I'm going to visit the Abakh Khoja Mausoleum before taking the early afternoon train to Kuche. It's going to be interesting to see how the Chinese trains compare with the Kazakh and the Uzbek ones.

The Silk Road (Sort Of) Overland
Thursday 11 August 2011

At the very end if this day, when the clock struck midnight, I was still sitting in the front seat of a pickup truck bouncing up and down as we were were slowly making headway along the atrocious Chinese roads from the Kyrgyz border towards Kashgar. I had not expected things to go this way when I woke up this morning.

But first things first. And I have this feeling this will be a long post; it's been a long day.

Having your own taxi is expensive, but one advantage is that you can ask the driver to stop anytime you want to take photos. This is exactly what I did as I travelled from Osh to the Chinese border this morning in a black, powerful 4x4. This road is a mix between very good, OK and almost non-existent. However, the scenery is stunning all the way, and although I had planned to listen to my audiobook for the five-hour journey to the border, I got so taken in by the scenery that I forgot all about it.

First, we had the rolling green hill-like mountains, with yurts here and there - the nomadic tent-structures common to this region. Next, we started the long ascent towards Sary Tash and it just got better and better as we went along. When we got to the point where we started to see snowy peaks, we came across three young kids selling fermented mare's milk, a treat you might be offered if you visit Kyrgyzstan (I've only tasted one mouthful and it's not a favourite of mine). I don't think they were getting many customers; traffic was light to say the least. But they didn't seem to mind at all. They seemed happy just to get some company up at this altitude (it was cold now, probably around 5-10 C).

However, when we reached the village of Sary Tash (3,500m), the view of snow-covered mountains in the distance - with the peaks of Lenin and Korondu (7,000m & 6,600m) - absolutely blew me away. And it went on and on as we drove along a plateau with these mountains in view for almost two hours. No wonder I was on a high when we reached the border.

Before my Kyrgyz driver left, we checked the details. I was told a black 4x4 would be waiting for me on the Chinese side, with one other passenger, and this taxi driver would take me directly to my pre-booked hotel. All I needed to do was to ring a number when I had cleared Chinese customs.

Clearing customs took much longer than I had anticipated. On the Kyrgyz side, we had to wait over one and a half hour for the border to open as they apparently had a lunch break 12-2PM (and we arrived 12.30). After clearing customs here, there was a 3 km stretch of road to the Chinese side and we were told we might get shot if we tried to walk this bit. Instead, we had to wait to be assigned an empty seat in a lorry by a customs official.

It was probably one of the highlights of today when I was sitting in this lorry and then seeing a red Chinese flag blowing in the wind as we turned a corner. I have been travelling through several of the Central Asian republics since 20 July, and even though I theoretically know that China takes over to the east at some point, the idea of the Stans turning into China is very exotic in a way. It's like travelling from one end-of-the-world (the easternmost point of the Stans) to another end-of-the-world (the westernmost frontier of the giant China). As I was exiting Kyrgyzstan and waiting to get to the Chinese side, I was constantly thinking about how remote this place was in every sense. This is the remotest I've ever been is my conclusion.

When I reached the Chinese gate, a border guard shouted at me, "One, two, three, four! We open the gate when there are four!" As I was the only one there, I just had to sit down and wait. Eventually, a small group of us were let in and we started the entry procedures for China, including having all our bags checked. The border guard didn't ask anything about my protein shake power, iPad or box of tablets (Immodium, Laxal, zinc supplements, antihistamines, statins). Instead, he started to read through my folder of daily prayers - The Hours - reading some of the prayers aloud. His questions were endless: What is this? What is the purpose of this? Why do you have this with you? Is it like the Bible? Eventually, he put the folder back in my suitcase and said it was OK. I think St Basil (or David in the Old Testament) would have found this response quite apt; prayer can have quite an impact.

Next, we all had to wait yet again. Apparently, the customs for China included two check points with a few kilometres in-between. So again, we had to wait to be allocated an empty seat in a lorry. And again, were were told we could not walk. As we were waiting, I was watching with fascination the solder who was responsible for waving a red or a green flag to the approaching lorries. He stood straight like the Queen's soldiers in Buckingham Palace and waved the relevant flag with vigour and precision at the appropriate moment. When the time came to swap flag-wavers, the exchange was also reminiscent of the Changing of the Guards at Buckingham Palace. They do take these things seriously, the Chinese.

As we were waiting for the lorries to give us a lift, I rang the number for taxi number two for the day. However, the lady answering did not speak one word of English! How am I supposed to confirm my arrival time for the taxi on the Chinese side if the contact person has no English?! Well, they know I'm coming and they presumably know how long the crossing usually takes.

After reaching the second check point on the Chinese side, we all had to go through four separate passport checks plus having our bags X-rayed. It was nearly 4.30 PM by now, and it had taken a total of four hours to clear customs.

This is the point of today when things started going pear-shaped. There's a two hour time difference between Kyrgyzstan and China, since all of China is on Beijing time, and exiting customs at 4.30PM, it was now all of a sudden 6.30PM. There was only one taxi outside the customs exit doors - a guy with a pickup truck asking for much more than the agreed price for my pre-booked black 4x4.

To cut a long story short, the lady with no English appeared and we had a conversation that was translated via a guy in Osh on the phone. My taxi had left as it had become late! What kind of tour operator does that!? They knew I was on the way! People don't just disappear when crossing a border - especially not with five separate passport checks and two luggage checks!

Being cross didn't help of course. The lady wanted me to get on one of the lorries. Not exactly the 4x4 I had expected. However, in the end she managed to find a guy with a pickup truck who was going to Kashgar. So I got some Chinese money and off we went. It was now 7.45PM local time and the journey is supposed to take five hours. I now realise I won't be in Kashgar before midnight.

After 15 minutes, the Chinese driver stopped the pickup truck and started making phone calls, fiddling with pieces of papers, adjusting the radio etc. With not a word of Chinese, and the driver not having any English, I could not for my life work out what was happening. Was I going to be kidnapped or robbed by some people he was calling? Was he going to start renegotiating the agreed fare? Were we waiting for another customer? Being at the most remote place I've ever been and not understanding a word of Chinese, my mind started going through all sorts of options as to why my driver wasn't driving. However, the fact that the second passenger was a 10-year old boy made me think he was just innocently waiting for something. But what?

After half an hour, we started driving again. No idea what happened. By now, it's 8.30PM and we are passing though the most stunning landscape with red mountains and a nearly full moon. Normally, this would make me go camera crazy. However, this is about the time I start to realise that this road is the worst road I've ever been on. Most of it is gravel road with bits of wobbly paved stretches, and the gravel road was very bad, with speed bumps made of sand and clay at regular intervals as well as weird twists and turns.

I must have missed any info on this road as I read up on this journey in my travel books! I seem to remember reading that on the Chinese side the roads "even have hard shoulders". In other words, the roads would be better than in Kyrgyzstan. In my mind, I always imagined that the tiger economy of China would have put a lot of money into its infrastructure and that its network of roads would be superior to any road network in the Stans. It's because of this assumption that I was so utterly unprepared for the nightmarish road journey I suddenly found myself being a part of today.

The whole journey took six hours, not five, and the car I was in was bouncing and shaking and twisting and turning non-stop the whole time (I think there were about ten minutes of even tarmac somewhere after the first city we drove through). Some bits were incredibly bad, and since most of it was gravel and we were continually overtaking lorries (or being overtaken by lorries!), we had these clouds of sand and dust flying around us. And the worst bit of all was this area of a few kilometres that looked like a war zone: this huge piece of rescuing equipment/lorry was parked in the middle of the road, pulling up a large lorry that had slipped off the road, and we had to manoeuvre around it while making sure we wouldn't slide off the road as well! At this stage I felt we were driving through some kind of no-mans-land that lay outside normal civilisation.

It was like a never-ending nightmare, with the realisation that I have no other choice than to sit in my seat and endure it. Fortunately, the driver wasn't a maniac driver. In fact, he was very sensible considering the road conditions.

For a while I was wondering to myself whether I would get ill being tossed back and forth for hours on end. Is there a condition resulting from bring shaken for an extensive period of time? Don't know. But I had this image of lying in my hotel room with curtains drawn the following day. However, in the end I just entered this state of timelessness and endless bouncing. Though I also had these images of caravans of camels and cargo slowly making their way through this landscape, following the Silk Road, and I guess I've now had a real taste of what travelling along the Silk Road really was like.

One thing that did happen in my mind during this journey was a sort of readjustment of my view of China, from a rich and well developed country to a country that has the worst roads in the the world (I've never been to China before). Which would mean a different kind of expectation of what the cities and towns would be like as well. If this is one of very few roads leading from China to the Central Asian republics, and if China's commitment is to business and trade, surely a wide, good-quality road, able to cope with this endless stream of lorries, would be a top priority?! As I was bouncing up and down, I was kind of downgrading my expectations of what houses, hotels, city centres etc. in China will be like.

However, on a more positive note, I warmed towards the driver after a while. He wasn't, after all, responsible for the roads. He tried to communicate with me, and I discovered he did know a few words in English: "OK", "toilet" and "hours". He also smiled every time he said something, for example when we made a loo stop, he smiled broadly and said, "toilet". I can't help, though, feeling that the smiling was a bit incongruous at times. When we after four hours of driving stopped to let off a third passenger he had picked up earlier, my calculations told me we only had one hour left to Kashgar. However, at this stage my driver turns to me to correct my error by saying "Two hours!" with the broadest smile I've ever seen. No - correction - he looked positively ecstatic when he said "Two hours!" The message of two hours was more like a doubling of a prison sentence for me. The smile thing really threw me at this point.

So, as I said in the beginning, as the clock strikes midnight I'm still bouncing along the gravel road winding its way through the Chinese mountains. It's not until 3.00AM I've checked in at a hotel.

Going through the Irkeshtam Pass has been an experience of a lifetime, though I think once in your life is quite enough.

Travel tip: the only way to do a single-day crossing of the Irkeshtam Pass is to leave Osh 5.30-6.00AM to ensure you reach the Kyrgyz border before they close for lunch at 12 noon. In this way, you should reach the taxis on the Chinese side at a decent time.

The Silk Road (Sort Of) Overland
Wednesday 10 August 2011

Today has been a totally magical day, one of those days that make all the hassle of travelling through Central Asia absolutely worth it.

The tour company lead turned out to be more than just a lead. In fact it was a firm commitment from the tour company as they showed up just after 9.00AM at my guesthouse, ready to take me wherever I wanted.

I knew that the 11th and 12th century mausoleums in Ösgön, 55 km from Osh, were an absolute must for today (as all Silk Road remains are long gone in Osh itself). "No problem. We'll take you there." I also wanted to see Osh itself, as this used to be a major Silk Road hub, and since Osh itself has roots that go back 3,000 years. If nothing else, I can at least get a sniff of business and trade at the bazaar to remind me of Osh's substantial Silk Road past. "Of course. No problem." And since I really must move on very soon, I also want to get a feel for Kyrgyzstan's great outdoors and countryside. Mumble, mumble for a while between the boss/driver and the guide. "Sure, we can take you to see a real Kyrgyz village as well." And could I walk around there, near some mountains? "Yes, of course." And off we went.

The mausoleums in Özgön were absolutely gorgeous. Three connected terracotta-buildings nearly a thousand years old, with beautiful brickwork and interesting patterns/Arabic script. Plus a minaret I could climb.

The Kyrgyz countryside was as stunning as any of the outdoors I've seen so far, with incredibly green fields, rolling hills and mountains, lively rivers and rows of cypresses appearing with regular intervals. On top of that, I was invited for lunch at an incredibly picturesque farm and being offered the most tasty, home-made food - with kids, dogs and chickens all around.

And there's more. We drove for quite a while, deeper and deeper into a mountainous area with our 4x4, on roads that were chocking but no problem for our driver. We ended in a secluded village that had been used as a summer camp for young people prior to the fall of the Soviet Union, now a collection of houses and play grounds and a pool - all in dilapidated glory. This is where I went for a nice long walk in the beautiful Kyrgyz outdoors.

My guide was a 19-year old Kyrgyz by the name of Azamat who had lived in Lewisham, London, for a while and who said "innit" every two minutes. Azamat was a great, knowledgeable and entertaining guide. "This food is completely natural, innit? That's why Kyrgyz are never sick." By the end of my country tour, I felt ready to give up Diet Pepsi and move to the green countryside of Kyrgyzstan.

We finished the day by climbing up to Solomon's Throne, a 100-metre plus rock/mountain that sticks up right in the centre of Osh. Fabulous views from there! And, before I forget, the tour company is called Avantia (www.avantiatur.com) should you ever be in Osh.

I've got pretty much everything I wanted from my visit to Kyrgyzstan in one single day and I'm ready (eager!) to move on, especially since I lost five days in Almaty, waiting for my Uzbek visa. I'm also so impressed by Avantia that I've asked them to arrange for my journey into China tomorrow. The result is that I've got two taxis arranged, one for each side of the border, plus a booking for a hotel in Kashgar. The journey will take ten hours plus and take me through the Irkeshtam Pass (3,600m) into China.

The taxi will come at 6.00AM. I'll better get some sleep.