Sunday, September 10, 2006
KASHGAR
At first impression it was very disappointing, just another large modern city, with big rather drab buildings but wide streets and pavements, hardly improved by the statue of Mao in the main square. We have been here a week and are just beginning to find our way around. Kashgar is famed as the meeting point of traders, being on the border of Pakistan, Tajikistan, Afghanistan, Kyrgyzstan etc.
It doesn't feel like that now, just one interesting old quarter, behind the unimpressive mosque, with two trading streets with lots of bakers operating traditional ovens making nan bread. The round dough is dipped in onion before being shaped and pricked with the maker's pattern before being baked, and finally being brushed with egg white.There speaks a baker's grandson!
It may no longer be a trading hub as of yore, but it certainly is a traveller's Mecca. The Caravan Cafe run at least in part by Michael, a tall English guy, has been for us a wonderful source of information, from him and other travellers. He directed us to a new upmarket Uighur cafe called Turan where we ate wonderfully well on quality food for 55Y (£3) for two, a far cry from the 5Y usually paid but well worth the difference if you can afford it.
The biggest problem is getting understood, they don't appear to understand my Mandarin and although the menu is in pictures it doesn't really help to identify the type of food, nor does a menu in Chinese characters or an unhelpful English translation. For instance Polo is called 'Eat with Hands' and Laghman was 'Drew Noodles with Crushed Lamb'. We now translate this as Drawn noodles and minced meat. Only today at the market did we realise the true meaning of 'drew'.
A lump of dough is stretched by hand and then doubled and twisted into a plait, time after time to knead the dough, finally the process is repeated but between each fold it is dipped in flour to prevent the threads sticking. It finally emerges as lots of parallel noodles which are thrown into boiling water. The end result is a thick long spaghetti, as delicious as any Italian pasta.
Polo was accompanied by home made delicious yoghurt, Yeo Valley eat your heart out! The glasses of water served free with meal were in fact flavoured with lemon juice. (Today on the market we watched whilst our glass of pomegranate juice was crushed on a stall piled high with the original fruits.
Our first destination today was the cattle market, slightly out of town, a 10Y taxi ride. We deliberately arrive early beating the tour parties but also most of the animals. We didn't need to have been so early, 10am Beijing Time, as by the time we left at around 2 pm there were still as many animals entering for sale as leaving with their new owners. Animals were in different sectors of a walled market place, lots of sheep in a wide variety of hues, cattle being forced to jump off the back of lorries and mule powered trucks, and after sale to jump back onto someone else's.
Mules, all in remarkable good condition and sprightly, were being tried out by prospective purchasers', who after the normal feel and teeth inspection then persuaded the seller to demonstrate how well they had been trained. First leading, then riding and finally harnessed into a cart and driven. The owner took first turn and the buyer then tried the same operations himself. Money was changing hands. Some men had huge wads of notes in their hands, others hid smaller sums under their hats. Hands were shaken in a conventional way once a deal was struck, but the greeting was with hands outstretched pressed together and the others hands completing a double decker sandwich.
The horses at the far end of the ground were rather disappointing, their ribs were all too obvious. Most were pulling somewhat personalised decorated carts, their bells jingling as they showed off their prowess. Food stalls where you could eat laghman with the hand 'drew' noodles, or Nan bread cooked on the spot with a lamb stew, and a row of stalls selling ropes, halters, girth material, bells, everything a farmer would need.
Yesterday we shared a car booked by Theresa to Karakul. She hailed from LA but has lived in London for fifteen years and was clearly involved in theatre and writing scripts, but had engaged on this trip as a way of filling out her research into the Silk Road on which she was intent on writing a novel set in the Tang dynasty. She was good fun, just one of the interesting people we met in the Caravan Cafe. The drive took nearly four hours climbing to the Karakoram highlands. There was a stop at a border post to check our passports as we passed into an Tajik Autonomous Territory, like Tibet still part of China.
At Kakakul lake there was the inevitable parking lot full of tour buses, many of the passengers were persuaded to take a short trip on a camel or horse, a sort of ride on the sands. We three decided to walk part way around the lake, and to do so had to jump over several small streams, the first time I have jumped on my new hip, so my confidence took a leap as well. It was a first too for Joan on her metal knees, and apart from a huge skid on the mud she performed admirably. The lake is set in a valley surrounded by snow capped mountains. Thankfully the visibility improved after noon as the mist burned off. We found a nice grassy mound and enjoyed the picnic of food we had purchased in the local supermarket. (The supermarket in Kashgar had been difficult to find, but we got there by repeatedly asking 'Yi Jia zai nar?' Later we were to discover a huge shopping street under one of the major roadways.)
At the Caravan we had a long talk with a German, who spoke English far quicker than I and had just arrived from a month in Pakistan through the Hunsa Valley and the Karakoram Highway. As Sarah Hopkins would no doubt concur the area feels completely safe, (unlike our Foreign office which says unequivocally 'Don't enter Gilgit'. He found the people are so poor and so hospitable, sometimes beyond their means. He said, 'For real fundamental Muslims think Pakistan, the people seem to accept the regime without thinking and the women after marriage frequently never leave the house'.
On the other hand he contrasted Iran where he found the people did not accept the role which the state and the ayatollahs were trying to impose and acted in total independence. He was taking every opportunity to advise people to travel in Iran. He had been made very welcome, travel was very easy and dirt cheap, especially petrol, the only drawback was the need to carry all money as cash, since there was not even a means of changing travellers cheques. He was especially impressed by the willingness of those who spoke fluent English to discuss politics openly.
Bruce Wood, retired as GP in Vancouver Island in June, he was cycling with a slightly older friend Carl a retired PE teacher. Bruce once did a year's exchange in Immingham. As he said 'in my working life as a doctor I liked to be in control and everything to be in order, as I suspect you did, but I like to mix it with chaos on holidays'. I guess he was verbalising my thoughts.
They had just returned from three weeks cycling around Krygystan bivouacking in sleeping bags overnight. The bikes were bought in Kashgar. We clicked amazingly well with them, perhaps there was so much in common, apart from age, though I guess we could give even Carl 10 years, grandchildren, Joan and I had lived several years in Canada. Bruce went to Banda Acheh to help the UN effort after the tsunami, where a coast the length of Wales was wiped out in minutes. Joan and I have such fond memories of our month or so on the West Coast of Sumatra, . Bruce's wife preferred to holiday for ten days in Venice, but then she's an artist who will be exhibiting in Birmingham next year.
The last we saw of them was as they cycled the road out to Karakul Lake as we were returning. They were on their way to Pakistan, for some hiking (climbing?) in the Karakoram, before flying to Amritsar and back to Delhi via the Pushkar Camel Fair - that unexpected development did make their wives jealous. We met on the road across a chasm where it had collapsed due to the weight of water flowing down the mountain due to the snow melt that afternoon. Traffic was piling up on both sides. There were three separate pairs of touring cyclists including a German mountain guide and his wife.
It looked as though we were destined to spend the night there until a huge articulated lorry carrying and large bulldozer parked behind decided to brave it with his power, but got stuck in the pit in spite of a mighty attempt to escape marked by clouds of dense black smoke. Nevertheless he had the means of escape and off loaded his bulldozer which proceeded to fill the hole with rubble and big boulders for the benefit of us all.
Eventually he got out and this opened the route by which we forded the rushing river. We were going to make the Kashgar Sunday Market next day after all!!
Off to the Turan restaurant now where we may meet up again with Theresa.
At first impression it was very disappointing, just another large modern city, with big rather drab buildings but wide streets and pavements, hardly improved by the statue of Mao in the main square. We have been here a week and are just beginning to find our way around. Kashgar is famed as the meeting point of traders, being on the border of Pakistan, Tajikistan, Afghanistan, Kyrgyzstan etc.
 |
| Selling Ripe Yellow Figs in the street |
 |
| Two boys in the Old part |
 |
| Tandori Bread |
It may no longer be a trading hub as of yore, but it certainly is a traveller's Mecca. The Caravan Cafe run at least in part by Michael, a tall English guy, has been for us a wonderful source of information, from him and other travellers. He directed us to a new upmarket Uighur cafe called Turan where we ate wonderfully well on quality food for 55Y (£3) for two, a far cry from the 5Y usually paid but well worth the difference if you can afford it.
The biggest problem is getting understood, they don't appear to understand my Mandarin and although the menu is in pictures it doesn't really help to identify the type of food, nor does a menu in Chinese characters or an unhelpful English translation. For instance Polo is called 'Eat with Hands' and Laghman was 'Drew Noodles with Crushed Lamb'. We now translate this as Drawn noodles and minced meat. Only today at the market did we realise the true meaning of 'drew'.
 |
| MAKING NOODLES AT THE MARKET |
 |
| FINISHISED NOODLES ABOUT TO BE COOKED |
Polo was accompanied by home made delicious yoghurt, Yeo Valley eat your heart out! The glasses of water served free with meal were in fact flavoured with lemon juice. (Today on the market we watched whilst our glass of pomegranate juice was crushed on a stall piled high with the original fruits.
Our first destination today was the cattle market, slightly out of town, a 10Y taxi ride. We deliberately arrive early beating the tour parties but also most of the animals. We didn't need to have been so early, 10am Beijing Time, as by the time we left at around 2 pm there were still as many animals entering for sale as leaving with their new owners. Animals were in different sectors of a walled market place, lots of sheep in a wide variety of hues, cattle being forced to jump off the back of lorries and mule powered trucks, and after sale to jump back onto someone else's.
 |
| Checking teeth |
 |
| Sheep for sale |
The horses at the far end of the ground were rather disappointing, their ribs were all too obvious. Most were pulling somewhat personalised decorated carts, their bells jingling as they showed off their prowess. Food stalls where you could eat laghman with the hand 'drew' noodles, or Nan bread cooked on the spot with a lamb stew, and a row of stalls selling ropes, halters, girth material, bells, everything a farmer would need.
 |
| THERESA and JOAN |
 |
| KARAKUL |
 |
| YURTS for TOURISTS |
At the Caravan we had a long talk with a German, who spoke English far quicker than I and had just arrived from a month in Pakistan through the Hunsa Valley and the Karakoram Highway. As Sarah Hopkins would no doubt concur the area feels completely safe, (unlike our Foreign office which says unequivocally 'Don't enter Gilgit'. He found the people are so poor and so hospitable, sometimes beyond their means. He said, 'For real fundamental Muslims think Pakistan, the people seem to accept the regime without thinking and the women after marriage frequently never leave the house'.
On the other hand he contrasted Iran where he found the people did not accept the role which the state and the ayatollahs were trying to impose and acted in total independence. He was taking every opportunity to advise people to travel in Iran. He had been made very welcome, travel was very easy and dirt cheap, especially petrol, the only drawback was the need to carry all money as cash, since there was not even a means of changing travellers cheques. He was especially impressed by the willingness of those who spoke fluent English to discuss politics openly.
Bruce Wood, retired as GP in Vancouver Island in June, he was cycling with a slightly older friend Carl a retired PE teacher. Bruce once did a year's exchange in Immingham. As he said 'in my working life as a doctor I liked to be in control and everything to be in order, as I suspect you did, but I like to mix it with chaos on holidays'. I guess he was verbalising my thoughts.
They had just returned from three weeks cycling around Krygystan bivouacking in sleeping bags overnight. The bikes were bought in Kashgar. We clicked amazingly well with them, perhaps there was so much in common, apart from age, though I guess we could give even Carl 10 years, grandchildren, Joan and I had lived several years in Canada. Bruce went to Banda Acheh to help the UN effort after the tsunami, where a coast the length of Wales was wiped out in minutes. Joan and I have such fond memories of our month or so on the West Coast of Sumatra, . Bruce's wife preferred to holiday for ten days in Venice, but then she's an artist who will be exhibiting in Birmingham next year.
The last we saw of them was as they cycled the road out to Karakul Lake as we were returning. They were on their way to Pakistan, for some hiking (climbing?) in the Karakoram, before flying to Amritsar and back to Delhi via the Pushkar Camel Fair - that unexpected development did make their wives jealous. We met on the road across a chasm where it had collapsed due to the weight of water flowing down the mountain due to the snow melt that afternoon. Traffic was piling up on both sides. There were three separate pairs of touring cyclists including a German mountain guide and his wife.
It looked as though we were destined to spend the night there until a huge articulated lorry carrying and large bulldozer parked behind decided to brave it with his power, but got stuck in the pit in spite of a mighty attempt to escape marked by clouds of dense black smoke. Nevertheless he had the means of escape and off loaded his bulldozer which proceeded to fill the hole with rubble and big boulders for the benefit of us all.
Eventually he got out and this opened the route by which we forded the rushing river. We were going to make the Kashgar Sunday Market next day after all!!
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