Yarkand

Unable to find bagels we settle for fruit instead, something which the silk road has in mouth watering abundance. The bus journey takes us out of the Oasis town of Hotan and on towards our next stop, Karghilik. The landscape outside of the big Chinese cities is very much like that I have seen on TV of Afghanistan. Sprawling mud walled compounds sit amongst a lattice work of dusty alleyways. Surrounding the homes are green fields of wheat, orchards and vegetable plots. As we pass a tall line of Poplar trees, that I guess are planted as a form of defence against the sandstorms, we burst out of the greenery of the irrigated area close to the river and are plunged back into the bleak yellow brown desolation of the desert.

The in-bus entertainment system plays a ‘so bad it’s funny’ cop drama from Pakistan that has been dubbed, badly too, into Uighur which makes it all the more hysterical. The fight scenes, which need no explanation, are all masterpieces of slow motion bullet strikes and laughable kung fu. The film climaxes with the hero driving a bus containing a bomb off a very high pier. He jumps to safety, landing miraculously unharmed on the beach whilst the bus plunges into deep water and explodes harmlessly. Despite having driven some distance from the busy urban centre where the bomb was supposed to explode, a platoon of smartly dressed cops appear from nowhere seconds later to salute their comrade. I wait, poised for the inevitable, barely able to contain my mirth... and then it happens. A beautiful girl with two kids in tow pushes through the crowd and the aforementioned hero is reunited with his beloved family. I crack up in barely concealed cackles, this film would definitely have won the Oscar for the greatest number of overused film cliches, I suspect however that somebody on the bus is shedding a tear at the emotion of it all and check myself accordingly.

Any kind of distraction from the bus journey itself is sweet relief so the film is welcome nonetheless. The seats on this bus are so narrow it feels like Jude and I are sharing 1 and a half seats rather than the two our tickets show that we have purchased. The road starts off not surfaced at all. This results in our ‘seats’ being turned into one of those vibration weight loss contraptions sold on QVC only I’ll have to wait for the swelling to die down before I can let you know if it has worked or not. When the road does become surfaced it has a long wavelength rippled surface that perfectly matches the natural oscillation of the buses suspension springs, this sets off a nauseating bouncing motion similar to driving a powerboat in big seas that makes reading or playing solitaire on the iPod totally impossible. Then there is the driver who clearly obtained his license from the back of a breakfast cereal packet and is determined to do the full journey without a toilet stop, not a wise move when several passengers are small children and sure enough 4 hours in a distinct sniff of wee cuts through the otherwise musty, muttony, unwashed body odour kind of smell that pervades the bus.

One highlight of the journey is that shortly outside of Hotan we pass a herd of what must be wild camels, and this goes some way to offset the generally awful nature of the five and a half hour endurance fest. I am sure that ‘herd’ is the wrong word for a group of camels. Like a parliament of owls or a constellation of starlings a group of camels deserves a fittingly ostentatious title. Perhaps a Medressa or Jirga of camels would be most fitting in terms of geographical location and cultural identity? Answers on a postcard please.

A railway line and motorway are being built alongside our woefully inadequate road and of these I have mixed feelings. I know they will be of immense financial benefit to the oasis  towns of the southern silk road, not to mention the convenience of shortened journey times and my bum would appreciate the joys of spirit level smooth asphalt or train tracks that’s for sure. The Uighur cultural identity in this part of Xinjiang is almost certainly going to be the victim though. By virtue of it’s inaccessible nature it has, so far, remained largely free from the destructive influences of modernisation. These will inflict upon it the scourge of shopping malls, tour buses, chain stores and hotels that will result in it looking exactly like everywhere else, just another unidentifiable part of the fat homogenous lump that is modern China.

For the time being enough of the old ways of life remain to make this diversion off the easy route direct to Kashgar a worthwhile digression. Karghilik lies at the junction of three roads, one from Hotan that we arrive on, one to Kashgar on which we shall leave and a third that heads south before splitting in two. To the south east lies the backdoor route into Tibet, a road rumoured to be as hard as it is rewarding. To the south west the road goes to the worlds highest battlefield, or it would do if the border to Pakistan wasn’t closed as a result of the ongoing tensions with India in this area. 

In Karghilik we go and see the ‘Friday’ Mosque and adjacent bazaar, other than that there is not much to grab our attention. We are using Karghilik though as a base for visiting the next town on the southern silk road, Yarkand, which lacks sensible accommodation options. The only hotel that allows foreigners to stay does so at substantially inflated prices.

In the past Yarkand was the seat of an ancient Buddhist kingdom and an important stop on the southern silk road. In its heyday it was larger than Kashgar, profiting immensely from its location at the end of the trade route from Ladakh in Pakistan. Next door to the 16th Century mosque is the pretty blue and white tiled tomb of Amannisahan, a former Queen of Yarkand and a distinguished Uighur poet and musician. Her husband, the King, is buried in the peaceful graveyard nearby but it is clear that she is held in much higher regard than her beau by the Uighurs of today, her contribution to their cultural heritage has not gone unnoticed or unrewarded and her tomb has become something of a pilgrimage site for a devoted following.

In the streets close by we find what I really wanted to see most of all, a slice of authentic Uighur life. The old town is everything it should be, full of life and an assault on every sense you posses. First we pass a collection of blacksmiths and metal workers where the loud ringing of hammers on anvils combines with the retina scarring sparks of welders at work. After this comes the noise and dust of carpenters sawing, shaving and sanding away at doors, cots and screens by the side of the road. We look inside a small shack where dozens of beautifully crafted stringed instruments hang from the walls. If we thought we could have got one back to the UK in one piece we may well have bought one but the long thin fret board obviously requires a fairly delicate touch, besides, neither of us can play… Barbecues belch billowing clouds of choking smoke into the air as the vendors furiously fan the coals and advertise their lamb kebabs to passersby with the Uighur equivalent of “six for a pound your gas lighters!”

As we approach a junction the air thickens with the metallic, sickly sweet smell of blood. A line of women sit behind a bench displaying a dozen or more severed goat heads, each perched atop their own four severed feet. The women flick fans back and forth above their produce in a half hearted attempt to keep the flies at bay. The goats’ vacant eyes stare unblinking into the midday sun and their tongues dangle in mock thirst as the heat of the day builds. I enquire as to the price and am surprised to learn that there is significant variation between them, it would seem that there is a scale of goat head quality that I am unaware of. Given the flies and smell I suspect the cheaper ones might not be as fresh, this makes the old adage ‘buy cheap, buy twice’ somewhat inaccurate. I’d certainly shell out the extra cash for a fresh head and feet given the choice. Having now experienced the sight and smell of all this up close though, I am not so sure I would be capable of eating one. The locals don’t seem to mind though as they casually fill plastic carrier bags with their newly acquired dinner.

The old town in Yarkand is one of the best experiences of the trip so far. The predominantly sterile Chinese tourist sights have little to offer in comparison to the raw vitality of life being lived, in many respects, as it has been throughout the ages. It is not hard to make the leap from what Yarkand’s ‘old town’ looks like now to what it would have looked like in Marco Polo’s day for instance.

Back in Karghilik we decide to have a Chinese dinner rather than Uighur, for a change, big mistake. Cold dishes take forever to arrive and fail to deliver in the taste department too. Afterwards we make a beeline to a Uighur restaurant for dessert where we make yet another stunning discovery. We have a couple of small strudel like cakes topped with a walnut and boy do they hit the spot. Sadly, when we return at breakfast, we find that they are awaiting the days delivery of these and as such we are unable to stock up on them for our bus ride to Kashgar, should have bought the whole lot the night before.

The 5 hour journey to Kashgar is yet another example of awful roads and worse driving standards. This drivers erratic behaviour is only matched by his superiority complex. Idly he plucks his nose hair and cleans beneath his nails whilst driving. At one point this almost results in us running off the road entirely but for the most part it just causes us to drift and swerve at random to and fro. It is with relief that we arrive safely into Kashgar bus station although Jude almost instantly becomes the target of a pickpocket attempt. With a set of tongs our would be thief dips into the side pockets of her combats but comes up short and rumbled. He slopes off all casual, still looking at us and lighting a cigarette as if nothing had happened. Alas, carrying three bags each prevents us from exacting our desired wrath and Jude settles instead for flicking him a very scottish finger.

Hotan

Armed with a bag bursting with snacks we board our bus. Three rows of bunk beds seven deep stretch the length of the vehicle. We have two beds on the bottom and towards the front, the best place to be in terms of comfort. The bus leaves at 2pm Beijing time but doesn’t even get out of the bus station before it stops and waits… Eventually it seems they round up all the awol passengers and finally at around 3pm we start to make real progress in the direction of Hotan, a destination we should reach, inshallah, in around 25 hours or so. Despite the sometimes overpowering smell of sweaty feet the bus is very comfortable. The beds are slightly too narrow and not entirely flat but despite this I am pretty sure I’ll sleep well enough, provided the road quality is good, that really is the deciding factor above all else. The only other complaint I’d make is that they should either leave the air-con on or off or better still find a medium setting for it. Instead we are treated to an increasingly stuffy environment where the quilts are a pure nuisance followed by a blast of icy air, imported from Siberia no doubt, that has temperatures plummeting and everyone burying themselves under as many blankets as possible. Still, mustn't grumble.

After an early evening break for noodles at a roadside store night falls and we turn off the main road. Suddenly the glare of street lighting is replaced by a whole lot of darkness. This is the start of the 500Km long trans Taklamakan Highway, an audacious feat of brazen engineering right through the middle of one of the most inhospitable deserts in the world. At 3am the bus halts, the lights are turned on and we all get a chance to empty our bladders. The desert night is so dark it reminds me of caving. A thick blanket of cloud obscures any glimmer of the moon or stars above and not a single vehicle, building or road light can be seen in any direction, save the running lights of our own bus. Stepping off the road into the lines of hardy grass planted to stabilise the desert our feet break through a thin hard crust of sand to a dusty layer beneath. Every 5km a small building houses a lone caretaker who looks after the irrigation system that keeps the grass alive and the road open. After irrigating the grass ourselves everyone is back on the bus and we are off again.

Not long after dawn I am woken by some strange antics. I find the bus appears to be doing a hundred point turn on an unsurfaced road. With bed head hair invariably sticking out in random directions and a perplexed look on my face I join the rest of the passengers all trying to figure out what on earth is going on. After a while the pieces of the jigsaw fall into place. The actual road is being upgraded and is currently blocked by a very wide resurfacing machine. To avoid this we have taken a dirt road running parallel to the main road. During the night however, and oddly I thought for a desert, there has been a fair amount of rain, it seems that this is pretty normal for the season. This has caused a small but dramatic flash flood that has washed away several sections of our dirt road. Most of these we manage to bypass by judicious use of the currently unsurfaced main road with its unfinished bridges sprouting rebar like a concrete hedgehog. At one point however we are forced to wait whilst JCB’s are brought forward in order to temporarily repair the temporary road long enough for us to get through. Meanwhile the muddy brown water backs up behind the road/dam making it obvious that before long this repair will indeed be washed away as well. It all looks slightly suspicious and I am relieved when we find ourselves back on a surfaced road once more. It is clear that keeping the desert highway open is far from easy and requires a significant amount of round the clock effort.

Once the desert is traversed we hit one of the oldest routes of the silk road and turn west on to it. This old southern section of the silk road is little used and far removed, in several respects, from it’s modern superhighway equivalent on the northern edge of the desert. There is little to see in terms of sights along this route but it is the authenticity of this road combined with its numerous Uighur Oasis towns that draws us to it. First stop, Hotan. We complete our journey in the expected 25 hours and check into the “Happy Hotel” which is clean-ish, cheap and comes with an interesting variety of smells both inside and outside the room. Despite dozing plenty on the bus we are both exhausted and crash out early.

In the morning we try to take local buses to the Atlas Silk Factory but this doesn’t work out. Bus routes have obviously changed since the guidebook was written and at times it seems I speak better Mandarin than some of the locals, my Uighur is certainly as good as their English which means that communication is hilariously unproductive. I am regretting not buying the Central Asian phrasebook now, things could get interesting at this rate. Good job I like playing charades. We decide to jump a taxi instead and third time lucky we find one that knows what we are talking about.

The Atlas Silk Factory is a traditional workshop in a small village about 10Km outside of Hotan. It turns out to be so good it deserves to have busloads of tourists waving 100 Yuan notes at the ticket office but fortunately for us it has neither tourists nor an entrance fee. We pay 5 Yuan each for the privilege of taking photos. I’d happily pay much more as the subjects are about as good as it gets. Grizzled old mama’s pull and spin fresh silk filament out of boiling cauldrons full of cocoons whilst toothy old men with skull caps and wispy white beards work ramshackle looms with dazzlingly dyed threads. It is a gem.

In search of the carpet factory we end up at a Jade market on the banks of the Yurungkash River. Here the swirling brown river courses between great braids of gigantic river cobbles on it’s journey from the high mountains of the Kunlun Shan to the sands of the Taklamakan. On it’s way the waters deposit their precious cargo of Jade into the river bed, a commodity that has provided Hotan with it’s most reliable form of income for the past 7000 years, yes, 7000! Long before silk became fashionable and even to this day numerous people dig up the river bed with picks and shovels in search of it. Behind the endless stalls of Jade merchants though is something that takes our fancy, a restaurant. Redolent of luxurious caravanserai the decor and tableware sweep us back in time to another life and the food is equally as good.

Continuing our search for the carpet factory we get distracted again, by a barber shop. My beard by this stage has gone untamed for some time and is starting to provide suitable nesting facilities for small birds. I try to explain what I want to the well manicured chap brandishing scissors but he isn’t interested. I get ushered into a chair where he starts combing and clipping with scant regard for my protestations. I give up on trying to get my point across, he is the one holding the sharp implement after all and my barber is chomping at the bit like an artist with a blank canvas, he seems determined to give me a Hotan special. Once the preliminaries are over I am asked to lie down on a bed so the razor work can begin. Very deftly I get what Jude describes as a “biblical” beard sculpted like topiary out of the ragged mess that once ruled the lower half of my face. Twenty Yuan is a steal in my book for what I think might well be the best shave of the trip so far, not as much pampering as the shaves of southern asia but I like the look of this more, sharp. There will be just enough time to let it get raggedy again before Kygyzstan and my next barbers visit.

Fed and shaved we eventually find the carpet factory where not only is there no charge for a tour but there isn’t even a tour. We wander in and wander round taking pictures as we like of the women at work on a dozen or more vast carpets expecting to get stopped at any time. As we leave we contemplate going to the show room but decide against it, we have already bought one carpet on this trip…

My deep appreciation for Uighur food research just keeps getting better. For dinner I order ‘Suoman’ which are fried noodles with a similar sauce to Laghman but instead of noodle threads they are small pasta like squares. There is a generous quantity of pepper added to the dish and the result is divine. For dessert we head back onto the street to a vendor we spotted on the way in. With the point and pay method of food ordering in effect we take our seats at a bench. A small portion of sweet sticky rice is unwrapped from a pyramid shaped leaf bundle and squashed flat onto a saucer, over this is drizzled some dark syrup followed by a large blob of yoghurt followed by another drizzling of syrup. Do I really need to tell you how good it was? Oh alright, sharp yoghurt tanginess bursts through thick layers of fruity christmas cake like sweetness to create an orchestral movement of delight on the taste buds, and that from somebody who is not generally sold on desserts as a rule. Magnificent. I ask what it is called and the answer was something like “Soza”. The fella next to me asks me if we have “Soza” in America, I take an educated guess at the answer and reply “Mei you” (Not have). More’s the pity…

Uighur Bagels are on the agenda for breakfast, I look forward to telling you about those later.

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.

Dunhuang

I imagine Dunguang to be a dusty frontier town with a wild west feel, instead I am surprised by wide tree lined boulevards, fancy shops and immaculately kept streets. It is one of the most pleasant Chinese cities I have visited, yet for three months of every year according to one cafe owner, it is wracked by sand storms making it a hard place to live. After our arrival we head for the much vaunted night market for dinner. Despite a disturbing touristy feel to it the selection of food options is large and authentic. Donkey meat and noodles are the Dunhuang speciality but we are already sold on the Kashgari Kebabs. Despite asking for only a little chilli, the barbecued mutton pieces, cauliflower and bread all come liberally covered in the stuff. Once again we are victims of the relativity of perspective, the amount of chilli the chain smoking chef must normally have on his kebabs has me in total awe. On the menu I notice a sheep’s head for 25 Yuan. Jude is very keen to watch me eat one but point blank refuses to join in. On my own I feel reluctant, times like this call for partners in crime, after all there are two eyeballs in every sheep’s head… I defer for now but feel sure I will not escape China without following through, like some desperately hard caving trip I feel it is something I would like to have done even though I might not actually enjoy it at the time.

By taxi we head in the opposite direction to the tourist treadmill of the Mogao Caves and pass through yet more bleak desert on our way towards the Western Buddhist Caves. As we pull into the car park, which is nothing more than a specially flattened area of rock and dust, I feel my hopes rising, there is only one other car. A set of stairs descends to the bottom of a river gorge carved out of the soft conglomerate of river cobbles and dust that form the desert floor. In a pretty stand of rustling poplar trees a small port-a-cabin stands empty, behind a man sits on a park bench whilst talking into his mobile phone. He gestures for us to wait. A puppy bounds playfully in a small ditch to our right, it appears to be the only other living thing here. We are sold two tickets and a guide appears from deeper within the trees.

I am no connoisseur of Buddhist art and have not visited Mogao Caves so can not compare the qualities of the two side by side. I have been to a lot of Buddhist Monasteries in Tibet and the artwork was definitely better, if not older, there. A few sculptures of Buddha and his mates and a bunch of murals is no longer and unfamiliar site. As a connoisseur of caves I can tell you that these caves are definitely more than rock shelters but really only consist of one or two rooms and being man made they don’t qualify for my full appreciation. I am very glad that we didn’t pay through the nose then to visit Mogao, if the artwork and caves do not do it for you then only one thing remains and that is the atmosphere of the place as a whole. There is not a single souvenir stall here, we are the only visitors and after the short tour finishes we are allowed to wander unaccompanied up the gorge. With nothing but the sound of the wind rustling through the trees and a lone cuckoos call it is easy to contemplate the history of this place. The monks that lived here as early as 300AD must have led a brutally austere life. One made possible only by their devout beliefs and pious work carving and painting caves. This sense remains today with the caves current guardians. A small group of government workers and their wives live here semi-permenantly as the caretakers and guardians of the past. Their sacrifices in living such a lonely existence out here in the desert are analogous to those who went before them. The circle is complete, the tranquility and isolation perfect, how can Mogao Caves be a patch on a place this wholly evocative. With it’s souvenir supermarkets and and conveyor belt tour I doubt you’d get the same sense of place as is found here.

Later in the day we go to the Singing Dunes to the south of the city. These are the largest sand dunes in China and they are huge, proper Lawrence of Arabia stuff. Sadly the Chinese authorities have been busy here too and no it is the site of a grotesque “adrenalin park” where you can ride camels or go quad-biking, dune surfing and paragliding, all for an additional fee of course and never too far from another tacky souvenir stall. Giddy tourists wander about in ridiculous orange overboots intended to keep the sand out, I’m positive hiring those must come at an extra charge and sadly it prevents that most childish of pleasures, what is the point of playing on sand dunes if you are not going to get sand in your shoes, where is the fun in that? The 120 yuan entrance fee has me gobsmacked and we follow the guide books advice and go in search of the end of the fence instead. A twenty minute walk later and we are standing at the bottom of a very large, very unfenced and very untouristed mountain of sand. The climb is hard, three steps up two steps back. We persevere for a good hour, perhaps more. Walk for a bit then rest some. When the wind blows it sends great clouds of biting sand swirling around us forcing us to turn away and bury our faces in our scarves. After an age we stand above the “Adrenalin Park”, above Dunhuang and the surrounding desert, victorious in our ascent and in the avoidance of scandalous entrance fees. Only one last thing remains… We charge like lunatics down the side of the dune covering several metres with each bound. Plumes of sand erupt as my feet plunge deep into the soft slope and then flick out and forwards to catch my next leap down. “Woooohooooo!” I drop to my knees and slide the final couple of metres to the bottom, panting heavily with the effort. What took us over an hour to climb takes us less the twenty seconds to descend. I savour the rush of endorphins triggered by such a puerile act, if only they had a dune lift to take us back to the top, perhaps they do inside the “Adrenalin Park”?

Jiayuguan

Leaving Xian and Shaanxi Province behind the train heads North West through the Hexi Corridor. A natural passageway between the snow-capped peaks of the Qilian Shan mountain range to the South and the Ala Shan mountains and Gobi Desert to the North. This line of least resistance has been the main road to Central Asia since time immemorial. We reach and pass Lanzhou, Gansu Province’s capital, just as dusk is consuming the last warmth of the day. It is ten hours since we left Xian, in the days of the Silk Road however it would have taken a colossal 20 days to cover the same ground. Food for thought.

At four in the morning we are woken by the conductor, at five we disembark to a notably cool desert morning. We have arrived in Jiayuguan. The whole purpose for coming to this industrial wart of a city is to visit Jiayuguan Fort, a place that holds an important historical significance for the Chinese. For many years the gates of this fort were essentially the gates of China. Beyond lay the vast hostile wastes of the Gobi Desert, to compound the environmental dangers were the Xiongnu and a whole host of other nasty barbarian raiders who were willing to slaughter their grannies for a nickel or a dime.

There were three reasons for venturing beyond the West Gate, retrospectively referred to as “The Gate Of Sighs”. Merchants did it for the money, People like Zhang Qian (the Indiana Jones of the diplomat’s world) did it because it was their job and some, the unfortunates, did so because they were exiled. Any departure involved a substantial amount of risk. Zhang Qian for instance was sent out by Emperor Wu Di in 131BC to try and establish a military alliance with the Yuehzhi against the Xiongnu. On his way he was captured by the Xiongnu and spent the next 10 years as their “guest”. After escaping he, amazingly, carried on with his mission only to find that the Yuehzhi were not interested in an alliance. On his way home he was recaptured spending a further two years in captivity before escaping once more. Arriving home thirteen years later it is understandable that Wu Di was surprised to see him. It would be easy to see Zhang Qian’s mission as a failure but his records help prove otherwise. Not only was it the first recorded crossing of the Pamir/Tian Shan Mountain ranges, providing the crucial link between two existing trade routes out of the Pamirs, one heading East towards Europe and the other heading West towards China. They also contain the first Chinese references to a magical land called “Lijian” where people ate pizza and ice cream, wore tight trousers and rode around on scooters saying “Ciao” a lot.

Today Jiayuguan Fort pushes my imagination to the limits. If I am able to ignore the flag waving tour guides long enough I can just about recapture something of the essence of this place. Fleetingly I get the sense of what it must have been like to leave the security of China behind and venture out, risking all on the possibilities of making a fortune selling silk to a bunch of Sogdian middlemen. Standing atop the fortifications it still feels like a lonely outpost at the limits of the known world and it must have been with an enormous sense of relief that caravans saw the towers and silk banners of the fort rising above the dusty earth of the desert on their return.

Much of this insane country is strangely endearing but recently I am discovering something that I am less enthusiastic about. In our quest to relive the Silk Road we have had to shell out some significant wads of cash on the classic silk road sights. China cottoned onto the value of the tourist dollar a long time ago so high entrance fees are par for the course. Jiayuguan Fort, rebuilt from a bunch of crumbling ruins into an immaculately restored piece of history is amazing but it doesn’t stop there. They went on to build a lake, a souvenir village selling the usual tourist rubbish, a local culture village, a museum, a selection of overpriced hotels and a large carpark. Next they threw in an electric buggy service to ferry you around all these places, a bunch of camels, horses and quadbikes to ride around on, a deer to feed and a range of historical costumes to have your photographs taken in, giving them a multitude of ways of extracting every last Yuan from their punters. Not bad when it all started life as a bunch of crumbling mud ruins in the middle of a desert.

The worst thing however is that the local Chinese tourists love this ‘Theme Park’ approach to it all. Just south of Jiayuguan Fort the original ruins of the Great Wall end dramatically at a deep river gorge. A magical combination of wild scenery and thought provoking history combine to produce a spot worthy of an SSSI, AONB, UNESCO World Heritage award and half a dozen other protective orders. A place so perfect in its isolation that you could sit for hours drinking in the age and wonder of the natural and human world. Sadly not anymore. “What this place needs is some improvements” I hear The Party’s head of tourism say. “Yes, a recreation of a Dung Dynasty military encampment would be wonderful here. I went to Frontierland on Morecambe Promenade once and that is just what we need”. To top it all off they didn’t put this blasphemous theme park creation off to one side, that of course would be flinching away from making the killer move. Instead it is plonked on both sides of the gorge right next to the Great Wall with a suspension bridge linking the two. The previously inspiring view and postcard quality photo opportunity is now polluted in the most bizzarely ridiculous way by tourists playing, child like, on the idiotic amusements completely oblivious to the reason they decided to build it here in the first place. Our taxi driver seems genuinely surprised when we return from this ‘wonderful’ new facility looking like we have just been informed that out pet hamster has died. Talk about culture clash.

I also get a sense in China that the country operates on a policy similar to that asked of Kevin Costner in the film ‘Field Of Dreams’, “Build it and they will come”. So much of this country is a building site as it rampages headlong into a 21st century chock full of capitalistic money making opportunities. The result is six lane super highways and grandiose tourist facilities that are all but deserted. Perhaps in years to come the party chiefs will be proved right and glasses of rice wine will be raised to their brilliant foresight. In the meantime however I have moments when I feel like a character in the film ‘28 Days Later’, “Hello, hello, is there anyone here?”

Driving back to our hotel an aroma wafts in through the open windows of our cab. Smell is such an evocative sense, it has that strange ability to put you back into a particular time and place that sight and sound are rarely capable of. For me the one smell that reminds me of China is the one I breathe in now, that of stale urine. I am not deliberately trying to demean China, I really do love this place, it is without doubt my favourite travel destination. The fact is that budget travel in China exposes you to countless wash room facilities that you wouldn’t dream of washing in. Whether it is Chinese bus stations, hotels or trains I will be brought vividly back to all of them as soon as I enter any multistory car park stairwell in Europe. Thinking on this, as I do during long bus journeys, it occurs to me there is a very good reason for it. Bare with me and my crude mathematics, I have used approximate figures that allow easier calculations, none of what follows may bare any resemblance to reality.

Approximately 1.5 billion Chinese peeing, conservatively speaking, 1 litre per day.

There are 1000 litres in one cubic metre so that equals 1.5 million cubic metres of pee per day.

or… 60,000 per hour or 1,000 per minute.

In other words approximately 16 cubic metres of pee is produced in China every second.

16 cumecs! That is the size of a very scary white-water river, or yellow-water river in this case.

I’d like to know how many dog ends are stubbed out each second too, I imagine that is yet another disturbing statistic.

As merchants exited the West Gate of Jiayuguan Fort they would apparently turn and throw a pebble against the wall of the fort. Depending on whether the pebble fell straight to the floor or bounced back would indicate whether or not they would have a safe return. My source didn’t identify which result predicted which outcome so I decided to avoid any superstitious actions. Besides, we were leaving on a air conditioned bus traveling on a metaled road and showing Jackie Chan movies with bad Mandarin dubbing, I think our chances were substantially better than those of the aforementioned merchant.

The Gashtun Gobi desert spreads out in front of us like a blanket of rock and dust. The tendrils of humanity reach out into the wilderness, electricity pylons, telegraph poles, roads and railways, all attempting to tame and control the these bad lands.

The wick of asphalt burns ever onwards through the hot wax of the desert. We pass through dusty oasis towns where a lattice of green cultivation is sheltered beneath tall lines of poplar trees. Outside of these settlements there is not an ounce of shade to be found. The endless tarmac and dust devils to the side of the road reminding me of Mad Max. Speeding along in such a way makes it desperately hard to appreciate just how tough it would have been for the ancient silk road adventurers. The scenery out here is as uniform as it is dangerous. At a camels plod that would have meant pretty much the same view day after day for many days. There would have been little evidence of the slow but steady progress being made, I imagine the demoralising monotony of it all and perhaps even the insanity that would come to those not cut out for such hardship and privation.

At the far western edge of the Gashtun Gobi lies the major oasis town of Dunhuang. Beyond this is a desert so fierce it was literally called the “go in and you won’t come out” desert or Taklamakan. Here traders had a three choices as the route splits. The original Silk Road goes South to where the Taklamakan borders the Kunlun Shan mountains. A route difficult to access these days and to begin with one that passes through a less than pretty asbestos mining area. Then there was a central route going via a place by the name of Lop Nur. Today the desert is even more hostile than in years gone by and with the addition of China’s nuclear weapons programme using Lop Nur as a test area this route is all but impossible for silk road tourists these days. The northern route is the most recent and easiest route out of the three and the one we will take to the next major stopping point at Turpan. Conversely silk road traders in the past would perhaps have chosen the most difficult route rather than the easiest, the harsher and more unforgiving the route, the less likely it was to find bandits there. They certainly were a breed apart from the rest. I’d like to see a few of todays merchant bankers run the kind of risks these chaps took.

Before we press on however we have another tourist hell hole to avoid. The Magao Caves are the finest repository of Buddhist art anywhere in the world, at least they were until French and British ‘archaeologists’ (read thieves) came and carted away armfuls of the stuff so that it could live in dusty museum vaults in Europe instead… By all accounts the artwork that remains is still something to behold but for three reasons we are going to pass. First, the entry fee is something of a legend in itself, next you aren’t allowed to take photos and lastly, I don’t think I could survive a buddhist artwork theme park. Instead we are going to visit a similar but lesser sight in the opposite direction. We hope that less tourists will allow us a slightly more ‘authentic’ experience, my hopes are only partially raised...

Xian

A21 Floral Villas, Sai Kung becomes the official starting point of our journey. Ringo, our long suffering taxi driver over the years takes us to Hung Hom station at six in the morning. As we drive through Sai Kung for the last time in a long time we muse on what the place has come to mean to us. So much familiarity with it, everywhere we look there are countless fond memories associated with the view. It will be difficult if not impossible to replace how good Sai Kung has been to us over the past six and a half years.

Hung Hom station provides us with our last taste of Hong Kong in the form of a blueberry muffin and a tall Americano with skimmed milk. With the South China Morning Post tucked neatly under one arm for the news and crossword we board the Kowloon-Canton Railway for the two hour trip north to Guangzhou.

Guangzhou East Train Station proves to be the stepping off point into the deep end of China. I am totally unfamiliar with it as a location and the heavy bags make finding a ticket office a chore. Hacking, spitting, chain smoking middle aged Chinese men with paunches and brown suits shout loudly into their mobile phones, certain confirmation, if needed, that we are now across the border. Fortunately China does its usual thing and provides us with a string of amusing people with broken English who assist and entertain us on our way. The Guangzhou Metro is every bit as modern and efficient as Hong Kong’s MTR, a model of underground railway sophistication. Guangzhou Main Train Station however reminds us of the realities of travel in this vast country. What seems like an army of one hundreds thousand commuters mill around slurping spicy instant noodles from large paper bowls. A thick haze of stale cigarette smoke hangs in the air and yellow nicotine stains adorn the walls and ceilings, a testament to the amount of waiting that takes place here.

The K82 Sleeper Train departs at 14:34 on the dot and the next twenty-five hours roll past in a blur of sleep, scenery and green tea which we drink from our newly purchased plastic flasks that are the quintessential Chinese travel accessory.

First impressions of Xian confirm that it is a UNESCO world heritage site, the crenelated city walls peak above the swarm of tourists and touts that go hand in hand with anything given such an accolade. Like many places in China however the holiday makers are rarely foreign, the booming domestic tourism industry is quite clearly not suffering from the effects of a global recession.

A gentle evening stroll around the outside of the city walls reveals the citizens of Xian indulging in a bit of R’n’R as the sun goes down. A winding path threads its way through a narrow strip of public park abutting the walls. The very old, very young and everybody in between are grabbing a slice of the action. Couples promenade, teens swot ping pong balls energetically back and forth across purpose built outdoor tables, old gents stretch their limbs over the ubiquitous exercise equipment and a troupe of middle aged woman line dance like there is no tomorrow. A young girl sings her heart out at an alfresco karaoke bar and toddlers with squeaky shoes are encourage to say “Hello” to the passing ‘Lao Wai’ by doting parents. I remember again why I fell in love with China, where else in the world can you find such random pleasant oddness?

I am desperately seeking something in Xian that enables me to envision it as the eastern terminus of the silk road. I almost need to feel the pull of an unseen conduit drawing me west, away from the old Chinese capital. Wandering through the back streets of the Muslim quarter is pleasant but the large western style shopping malls packed with McDonald’s, KFC, Pizza Hut, Louis Vuitton and Nike stores as well as the grotesque tourist overload of the Drum Tower area leave me wondering what on earth this has got to do with where we are heading.

Leaving the crowds behind we hand over our money and begin the ascent up onto Xian’s infamous city walls, apparently some of the best preserved medieval city walls anywhere in the world. They do not disappoint. They are wide enough to drive a car along and high enough to put off any would be assailants. With the guard and gate towers built like fortified pagodas, so symbolic of Chinese architecture, it is one of those place that just conjures up images in your mind. For me it brings to mind one of my favourite films ‘Hero.' Zhang Yimou’s cinematic masterpiece of colour and emotion tells the fictionalised yet historical tale of the first emperor of China, Qin Shi Huang. The man who brought China’s various warring states together in 221BC through brutal conquest and united them in a capital not far from Xian. The costumes, sets and feel of this movie allow me to look upon the city with a certain amount of poetic license. The city within the walls today is clearly undergoing a revolution in town planning. All the newest buildings seem to have been constructed according to traditional design. Focussing on these and carefully ignoring the concrete carbuncles devoid of any architectural influence it is possible to let your imagination take over. In my minds eye I see a vast ocean of tiled roofs. The apex’s dropping down in beautiful concave arcs to the exaggerated upturned overhanging eaves. Erupting out of the multitude of markets, barracks and residences to stand proud against the horizon is the imaginary palace itself, quite literally the centre of “The Middle Kingdom. For a moment I hold this image in my head. The capital came and went from the Xian area before returning again later during the Tang dynasty, where in the eighth century it reached it’s zenith. Nowhere else at this moment in history is as cosmopolitan or dynamic as Xian, then known as Changan. Persians, Turks, Tibetans, Sogdians and South Asians mingle in the streets. Merchants and monks, soldiers and scholars, poets and prostitutes, beggars and businessmen, courtesans and conmen all rub shoulders in this melting pot of faith, ethnicity and social status. Looking outwards from the city walls it is harder to picture the past. The towering skyscrapers, numerous cranes and industrial smog are more difficult to ignore. Out there somewhere in the dusty recesses of history however roads snake out from the four major city gates north, south, east and west, each passing through the endless fields of agriculture that were required to sustain a city of 2 million souls. It is at the West Gate that I have the most profound connection. The realities of the past are almost certainly very different from the idea I have been forming in my head but if the Silk Road isn’t about romance then what’s the point of this journey?

Qin Shi Huang’s collection of toy soldiers just outside Xian beats anything I ever had as a kid. Seven thousand life size terracotta warriors including cavalry and chariots might seem excessive to some but in comparison to his real army, this one, prepared for his journey into the afterlife must have resembled nothing more than small platoon. Nevertheless this dramatic display of power only cements further what I have already come to realise. I have found the Xian I was searching for, the grand capital city of old that marked the beginning of the journey west for so many bails of silk and here, rather than Hong Kong, is the symbolic start to our travels.

Rough Itinerary

Hi all,

After a very frustrating, but enjoyable wait for visas in Hong Kong it looks like we will be back on the road again soon. As we enter the Peoples Republic of Censorship we will be unable to update this blog directly and facebook will also be off limits. We will hopefully recruit a willing volunteer to help us upload email updates to this blog for us instead. If you are keen to know where we might be in the next few months here is a rough itinerary of places and dates. It is not exact but should be close enough.

25th May - Xian
29th May - Jiayuguan
1st June - Dunhuang
4th June - Urumqi
8th June - Hotan
10th June - Yengisar
11th June - Kashgar
14th June - Into Kyrgyzstan
16th June - Osh
18th June - Bishkek
21st June - Karakol/Ala-Archa area
28th June - Into Uzbekistan
29th June - Tashkent
30th June - Samarkand
3rd July - Bukhara
6th July - Urgench
7th July - Nukus
8th July - Day trip to Moynaq and Aral Sea
9th July - Urgench
10th July - Khiva
16th July - Into Turkmenistan
17th July - Darvaza
18th July - Ashgabat
19th July - Mary/Merv
20th July - Into Iran
21st July - Mashad
23rd July - Tehran
24th July - Reyy
27th July - Yazd
29th July - Esfahan
1st August - Shiraz
4th August - Presepolis
7th August - Tehran
8th August - Qazvin
9th August - Alamut and Castles of the Assassins
11th August - Into Turkey
23rd August - Into Syria
31st August - Into Turkey... again.
2nd September - Istanbul
8th September - To Varna, Bulgaria... Europe.
1st October - Glasgow!

Thanks for reading, all the best.
Rich.