Along the Silk Road in China

Since Uzbekistan I have been passing along a route that includes many towns from the ancient 'Silk Road'. Leaving Kashgar, I moved along the Southern road of the Taklamakan desert that was also a well trodden route in the Silk Road days. From Kashgar I went to Khargilik (叶城, Yecheng in Chinese), there I stayed in the 'traveller's guest house' outside the bus station, as do most tourists by the look of the guest book. Strange thing there, I was a little bemused at first as the floor lady kept knocking on the bathroom door, but then I realised she was trying to demonstate that the bathroom light was sound activated. It was amusing how you could turn it on in different ways, shouting 'on' would switch the light on, so would shouting 'off' ! So did the knocking on my bedroom door late at night (which I guess were from ladies offering 'services'). Hi tech it sounds, but it did not fit in with the general appearance of the room, in contrast the shower had no real shower head, so the water just poured out like it was being pumped through a trumpet. The town had nothing of any special interest, just a historical note, it was almost entirely Uighur populated, very very few Han Chinese there, so lots of food stalls in the streets with various delicacies such as sheep's head.



Left: Traffic in Yarkand.
Right: Local Uighur people gather outside the mosque in Yarkand.

Next morning I took a bus backwards to Yarkand (沙车, Shache in Chinese), a bigger town half expanded by Chinese development, modern Chinese buildings, hotels, restaurants in one half, and the much more dusty but appealing old town area where the Uighur people hang out, big buzy bazaar, mosques, mausoleums and traditional old wooden houses. Many of those that were still standing looked like they were about to collapse or were abandoned, but the local way of life still went on as normal, selling food on the streets, animals wandering about, donkey carts and open trucks pulled by motorbikes whizzing around everywhere.

After a few hours I headed back to Yecheng, where if I could still catch a bus to Khotan I would, if not I would stay another night. On the way back (at a place I think was called Qinbag Zhen in Chinese Pinyin), the road was blocked, some big market going on, full of sheep, donkey carts, camels, food, quite an amazing site really. Took a while to get through but was worth the wait seeing all the animals, locals and the trading going on. In Yecheng there was a bus, almost full and so within 30 minutes of arriving it left and I was on yet another uncomfortable bus to Khotan. After some 8 hours on busses that day, my back hasn't been the same since.

Arrived in Khotan (和田, Hetian in Chinese) late at night and checked into the Traveller's guest house outside the station (again the same name, though this time translated to 'Traffic hotel'). Khotan is an old town renowned historically for its silk, jade and carpets trade. The next morning I moved to another cheaper hotel and walked around Khotan, took a bus to the silk factory, had trouble finding it and when i did they were closing. A pretty uneventful, unsuccesful day apart from finding a 'Western bakery' cafe that had all sorts of lovely sounding western foods on the menu, but out of all of them, only pizza was available, it was an OK pizza though and the waitresses there were ever so sweet and beautiful and found my attempts at communication incredibly funny. Today I moved to another hotel again (3rd in 3 days in Khotan) as yesterday's one had no hot water, this one is cheaper still, but actually better (I think so far). I was given room 102 which I could not find at first but then i discovered it, in between rooms 106 and 107 (of course!), and opposite 109, which was adjacent to 105.

This morning I visited the carpet factory and saw workers weaving carpets at quite impressive speeds, jumping columns along the loom without even thinking, knowing exactly where the next weave of that colour was to go. Very impressive skills on display and it seemed a nice atmosphere there, the ladies were working impressively but were still chatting amongst themselves at the same time. Only the sight of a strange foreigner watching, stopped them in their tracks. Walking back I stumbled across a jade market, I spotted crowds of people hanging around which usually signifies people selling mobile phones, but here it was jade. Quite a selection of stalls selling a variety of stones and other people just hovering around, pulling hands out of their jacket and showing you a handful of stones, like it was some kind of dodgy merchandise. A bit like my first ever visit to Amsterdam where you used to get approached all the time by dodgy men offering various drugs, but here the merchandise was just harmless stones. There was an amazing array of stones available and people asking ridiculous prices, but that was probably just a special price for the foreign tourist ! Some nice things but as I had no idea of value I resisted until I had done some more research. Further on I decided to pop down to the river where people were digging away with forks looking for jade stones, I chatted with a couple of people to see what they found and they had recoverd a few nice pieces, there were all sorts of people there, digging for their fortunes, old ladies alone, young girls with their babies, men in groups working as a team, obviously big business this. Final cultural visit of the day was to the jade factory to see workers carving and shining jade on their lathes, nothing special, but nice to see the environment in which it is being done. Some nice carved pieces available in the shop, but again far too expensive really. Later on, in the street, I bought a stone for 15 yuan, his starting price was 300 ! So shows how much they try to rip people off.



Top: The jade street market
Left: Khotan silk factory.
Right: Locals out seraching for jade on the river bed.

Tomorrow I have to make it to the silk factory again in the morning and then later, hope to leave for Urumqi (乌鲁木齐, Wulumuqi in Chinese) and Turpan (吐鲁番, Tulufan), North across the Taklamakan desert highway.