Turpan

On our final day in Dunhuang, whilst lounging at John’s Information Cafe, we meet a jazz musician from New York called Travis. He has until recently be playing upright bass in a multinational group based out of Chiang Mai in Thailand. His story is as large as his desire for travel and he seems to have found a way to unite his passion for freeform yet accessible jazz with the opportunity to experience much of south east Asia as part of a tour. Before that all starts however he is heading west, like us along the silk road. After the usual who are you, where you from stuff the clincher is when he asks how far west we are heading, I reply with a nervous laugh ‘Glasgow’. When we realise we are both attempting the same thing the conversation mutates into a discussion about the viability of different routes, visa options and time frames. It is a relief to me to find somebody else who knows so much about this part of the world yet has also never been there. We laugh at our shared nightmare visa application stories and swap tit bits about the latest news. I have unfortunately become deeply suspicious of interacting with other travellers over the years. I say unfortunately because I have met some fantastic people on the road who would no doubt, like Travis, be good buddies if we lived in the same city. For every kindred spirit however there are an equal, yet usually more proactive, number of people who combine to form the Russian Roulette of the social melting pot that is ‘the backpackers hangout’.

During my time in Africa I lost count of the number of people who talked at me about their own journey. They would always have been to better places than I, ones that I must go to; they had always got better deals on stuff they bought, stayed with more locals, had better plans etc, etc. I remember one chap asking me what hobbies I was into and after finding out that I was into caves proceeded to lecture me on his speleological prowess, how he had been down the deepest cave in the world which was in his home state in the USA, if only I’d known... Then there was the 18 year old girl who wandered around in bare feet despite repeated warnings about Chiggers yet lectured everyone else on Africa. I can only hope that she got an equally strong lecture from the doctor that ended up extracting the borrowing insects out of the soles of her feet. Worst of all though were the ‘overlanders’ (sorry Ben). These guys would rock up in their converted trucks like some 18-30s holiday in the bush, proceed to get inappropriately wasted and then do reckless and embarrassing things, like swim in the crocodile infested Zambezi River during a sundowner cruise. Perhaps I am just a mean spirited person incapable of accommodating other peoples differences but encounters like this made me reluctant to interact with other backpackers.

Only recently we had had a similar experience in China. A German solo traveller had sat next to us on the bus from Xian to the terracotta army. Solo travellers have the highest propensity for annoyingness in my opinion and this is for two reasons. One, the reason they are travelling alone might be that nobody wants to travel with them and two, they are so deprived of social interaction because they are travelling alone that when they do find and corner a potential target, as I am now, you get both barrels of their pent up conversation and this usually takes the form of a lengthy spoken essay of their travel experiences.

Solo German continues to rattle on with only the occasional pause for breath. I try to be accommodating and even attempt to humour him with a little conversation of my own. He doesn’t seem interested in what I have to say however and continues talking about himself. I find travel to be one of the most interesting and pleasurable activities available in this world but not today and today is my 32nd birthday. I realise with growing horror that my ‘special’ day might be memorable for all the wrong reasons. Fortunately for me Jude comes to the rescue and with Jason Bourne precision we loose our verbal assailant in the crowds of tourists.

All this is, of course, a terrible shame because meeting cool people is one of the highlights of travel, be they locals or fellow wanderers.

For a while at least Travis’s journey and our own dovetails so we take advantage. In Turpan we hire bikes and set off to see some of the local sights together. “Bikes are a brilliant way to experience the world”, Travis explains, “You travel slow enough to appreciate the scenery as it passes but it isn’t as slow and boring as walking. There are so many other reasons why it is great though. There is the freedom to head down interesting side streets that take your fancy and it is in actions like this that journeys become true adventures. The exposure of yourself to the world and the world to yourself on a bicycle also comes highly recommended (and I don’t mean the naked type of exposure). The smell of fresh donkey poop, from the humble beasts still used to pull carts in this region, being scattered along the road by each passing car is overpowering but poo this stinky is funny and makes me laugh. I’d have missed out on that chuckle had I been in a taxi. Then of course there are the kids, although some adults join in too, shouting and waving from the side of the road with big toothy grins. Going up hills isn’t so pleasant on a heavy and rickety single gear bike but screaming down them with feet spread out is always fun wherever you are in the world.

Dripping with sweat but energised by the exercise we arrive at Jiaohe, an ancient city proudly claimed as the best preserved, oldest, earthen city in the world. Yet another claim made meaningless by its numerous qualifications. Coughing up the usual entrance fee I find myself, again, annoyed. The decision by the Chinese authorities to make so much money out of their national heritage has effectively put it out of the price range of so much of their population. Entrance to the Magao Caves, we are informed by Travis, is 180 yuan. At current exchange rates that is about 15 quid but considering that you can buy a hearty breakfast in China for 20p the relative cost is more akin to asking Londoners for 150 pounds to enter St Paul's Cathedral. A scandalous robbery from the people of China by their own government.

Fortunately for us however Jiaohe, once clear of the flag waving, megaphone toting, baseball cap wearing tour groups, turns out to be an absolute gem. For once it has not been rebuilt to its former glory but has been left as a vast, dusty, ruined city and all the better for it. The winding maze of back alleys are full of ghosts that ignite the imagination. A donkey bays in the distance and my mental picture is complete. This may have been a far flung garrison town in the middle of some rough bad lands but at the same time it was no doubt full of life. The wide main-street would have been thronged with handbag wielding fashionistas in pursuit of the Tang dynasty equivalent of a Louis Vuitton and the large Buddhist monasteries would have reverberated with the guttural drone of the abbot and his monks. Out on the gates steely eyed soldiers would have scanned the horizon for signs of trouble and an endless stream of caravans would have been passing through to take their rest and re-provision for their on going journey. As we ourselves are realising water would have been perhaps the most valuable commodity of all on this part of the silk road, after all without oasis towns like Turpan and it’s predecessor Jiaohe, the silk road would never have been able to come through this way. The bright afternoon sun is intense off the bleached earth and the heat lays like a sleep inducing blanket upon us. Hiding in the shade we guzzle ice cold coke and eat ice-cream, hoping that a chilled sugar and caffeine fix will fuel our return to town.

Back in town we overshoot our next stop, the Emin Minaret, and end up cycling a couple of kilometres too far. A pleasant ride though it is we are relieved to be back under the shade with bottles of cold water in our hands. Despite all the heat and exertion however I am not uncomfortably damp, as I would be in Hong Kong. Much of my clothing is bone dry, yet I am desperately thirsty. I wipe a hand across my neck and it rasps over a patch of crystallised salt that clings to my skin like sandpaper. Turpan lies over 150 m below sea level, is surrounded by desert and is pretty much as far away from the ocean as you can get, they don’t do humidity here and as a result sweat evaporates from your body almost as fast as you can produce it. The Minaret is beautiful to look at but is more interesting in that, like the rest of Turpan, it is distinctly unchinese. The Central Asian architecture in the building is as obvious as the Central Asian culture in the people. The Uighur (pronounced wee-gur) share the same ancestors as the residents of Istanbul, and that is not the only thing they share. Physically they are very different from the Chinese being large and stocky with pronounced noses and round eyes they would not look out of place on the shores of the Mediterranean. Their language is Turkic in origin too, enabling them to be understood in Istanbul if not Beijing and in it’s written form has more in common with Arabic than it does with Putonghua. All this is perhaps not surprising when you consider how far away from Beijing we are. Two whole time zones to be exact and as the crow flies we are as far from Beijing as we are from Istanbul.

The effects of the cultural revolution on China should not be underestimated. The word “Revolution” puts a glossy spin on what was really cultural decimation. Religion, the arts, books, traditions and customs were all brutally repressed as being the preserve of a bourgeois elite. The sad result is that much of modern China is lacking in any real soul and that which you can find is usually a state sponsored reconstruction of something and feels false as a result. It is with some relief then that the ethnic minorities have kept hold of their age old ways of life. One of the reasons why Yunnan Province is so colourful is the presence of 14 recognised minorities including the fire-walking and sword-ladder climbing Lisu and the Naxi-Tibetans whose magnificent wooden architecture defines Lijiang old town. In Xinjiang the Uighur keep the flame alive with vibrant dress, jewellery and wonderful food, more on that later. Perhaps most noticeable however is their behaviour which seems less inhibited than that of the Chinese. More exuberant and extravagant in their gestures, a greater willingness to display emotion and despite what I have read in one guide book I would suggest that perhaps their nomadic history keeps a soft spot for travellers alive and well today.

Right, food! Uighur food is regarded as the finest of all Central Asian flavours as a result of its fusion with Chinese cooking. All the more reason then to appreciate it whilst we can then. Lamb forms the basis of pretty much everything, indeed we have eaten no other meat at any of the Uighur places we have dined at so far. The kebabs are of course de rigour and heavily spiced. Flat bread, called Nan, although here it is tougher or chewier than the Nans you might be familiar with are common and slightly sacred, dropping them on the floor and not picking them up is considered almost blasphemous. They are also heavily flavoured with garlic and spices too making them enjoyable even without meat. Pullao is fried rice which this morning came with Pumpkin shreds through it and a big dripping hunk of fatty lamb also. There are tasty lamb dumplings which are similar to greasy Cornish pasties and fried spiced chicken which remains on the to do list. Best of all tried so far is Laghman or Pull Noodles. The dough is pulled into ever longer and thiner strips by repeatedly stretching it and then doubling it up before stretching it again. To really work the stretch the strands are held apart in the hands and then flicked up and down and whacked with great force and flair against a table. The wonder at watching this spectacle of freshly prepared noodles is eclipsed however by the first bite. A thick tomato based sauce with garlic, peppers, chillies, green beans, onions and of course lamb is slapped onto the steaming hot noodles and then consumed with much smacking of lips and slurping of dangling threads. If you’ve had a night on the equally fantastic Turpan dry white wine which deserves to be exported more widely if indeed it is exported at all then I can wholeheartedly recommend Laghman as the best hangover cure this side of the Pamirs, it may even persuade some of you to give up on Irnbru altogether!

After we bid Travis farewell we make our way north. He already has his Kyrgyz visa courtesy of the embassy in Beijing, we need to obtain ours from the last chance saloon in Urumqi. Parting ways he agrees to send us an email with advice about crossing the border and I can’t help but feel that we will surely bump into him again in the future.

Urumqi is a typical Chinese city only slightly alleviated by the Uighur presence. Nothing really to recommend it as a place to stay so we get our visa and get on our way again when we can. As I write this we are on our first sleeper bus. We left Urumqi six hours ago and we might well have another twenty hours on board before we arrive at Hotan on the Southern Silk Road. The bus is comfortable of sorts but the smell of stinky feet is a bit much at times. My main hope is that we hit the Taklamakan desert before nightfall. To pass something so feared and revered in the dead of night and not see it would be a shame. My hope that I get some sleep is a close second.