Day One on the Southern Thread
Trip Start
Jun 05, 2011
1
64
108
Trip End
Ongoing
Yarkand, Xinjiang Uygur Zizhiqu, China
Tuesday, November 8, 2011
KASHGAR TO YARKAND BY BUS; 1:50PM to 5:30PM
Subiyi Aletun Hotel
NZ Craig had taken off on his bicycle just after daylight toward Hotan along the same route we were going by bus. We said we would keep an eye out for him. Eighteen year old Walter was waiting another day to finish writing an article on his cycle trip for his local newspaper in Belgium. The Germans, Franke and Frank, would stay a few more days before taking two trains to Xining from where they were going to ride the back way through Gansu Province to Sichuan Province.
While I was saying last goodbyes, Dave went early to the bus station to get bus tickets. Even though buses depart hourly to Yarkland, it is the holiday week and we thought we should assure our seats in advance. Beginning and ending of holiday periods usually have many travelers. Yesterday, he went to get the tickets and was told he needed to wait until day of departure to get a ticket. Now he was told if we wanted to get on the 2PM bus, come back after 12:10 .... It was a 20 minute walk from our hotel to the main station but he enjoyed taking different streets back and forth. He came back with a fresh out of the oven nang bread. He couldn’t find the Frisbee shaped nang we usually have and instead settled for the oversize bagel shaped one. Bagels are boiled and these nang are baked in the clay oven. But otherwise they look and taste similar with a salt on the outside.
I continued to chat with the others while Dave finished packing. Jim, a recent Economics graduate from Hong Kong, walked us to the taxi. He is hitchhiking his way through China & Tibet in order to meet interesting people along the way. His travels will give him an education that no University can.
Our plan is to ride the southern thread of the Silk Road by bus to in Xining, before turning south toward the Tibetan filled town of Langmusi then onto Sichuan.
OUR PLANNED STOPS ALONG THE SOUTHERN THREAD OF THE SILK ROAD
(don’t go this route if you’re in a hurry is the advice from our guidebook)
- Yarkand (3 hours from Kashgar) famous graveyard and Uyghur neighborhoods
- Hotan (biggest city on route - pop 104,000) (6 hours from Yarkand) Great market and Marco’s Dream Café
- Hotan to Charklik (aka Rouqiang) 10 hours. Crossroads town with spotty minivan transportation going east
-Charklik to Yitunbulake (4-6 hours)
-Yitunbulake to Huatugou (66km) (asbestos mining and ‘hell-on-earth landscape’)
-Huatugou to Xining (20 hours by sleeper bus)
Getting on the Bus to Yarkand
We gabbed so much before departing Kashgar that we got to the bus station only 7 minutes before departure. With departure proceedings completed (luggage screening and making sure everyone on the bus has a proper seat, we rolled out of the station and immediately began picking up more passengers. We zigzagged through north Kashgar which surprised us by the extent of its urban sprawl. Our time was spent in the confines of a small area within the city. We picked up more passengers at another bus station within Kashgar. Once out of that station, the one passenger per seat rule no longer applied. The aisles became packed. There isn’t an obvious main route out of Kashgar and we wondered how quickly and easily Craig got out of town. Our concerns were for not because two and a half hours into our bus ride we spotted Craig in his salmon colored fishing hat riding along. He was a good distance` past the town of Yengisar which is half way to Yarkand. We estimated he had done 110 or 120 km by 3PM. He was truckin’ at a good clip. It was a cool day and an almost flat desert landscape with just small undulations. But still, we were impressed. Craig was doing fantastic and we wondered if he was going to catch up to us in Yarkand, 200km from Kashgar.
We arrived in Yarkand at 5:30. We decided to stay two days and picked up tickets to Hotan before leaving the bus station. I watched the luggage away from the scrum of ticket buyers at the ticket window. I watched Dave being pushed and shoved as he clamed his place in the ticket line. People handed wads of money over heads to the people in the front of the line to have them get tickets for them. All Dave could do was brace himself and once in awhile poke his elbow into men and women alike who tried to inch their way ahead of him. Finally, I saw Dave bow his head down to the small opening in the glass separating him from the ticket issuer.
Armed with his Lonely Planet book and a small piece of paper he hoped would communicate his need to the ticket agent, the whole transaction took several minutes. And Dave emerged and was pushed out of the crowd holding his two tickets and wallet high above his head with a big grin on his face. We were proud of the achievement. But on re-inspection of the tickets, we discovered they were for next morning and not the 11th he had asked for. Again, Dave threw himself into the mayhem and returned 30 minutes later with the right tickets. It was 6:45 by now we checked into a hotel a few kilometers from the bus station.
Subiyi Aletun Binguan Hotel (only 100 RMB) is a newly build hotel that is adjacent to the mosque tombs and old town, basically all there is to see in Yarkand. Our only beef with the hotel is the centrally controlled heat made the room so hot, we had to turn on the airco – and this after we were cold and without heat in Kashgar.
Outside temps were a few degrees warmer than Kashgar and the streets were almost disserted. There were signs of prior activity with smoke charred walls and unoccupied food carts near the sidewalkes. But almost everything was closed. The holiday week was keeping everyone indoors at home. There were a few stands selling melons but all the restaurants were closed. We walked a kilometer where we finally found Mustafa’s Burgers, a decent fast food place with decent chicken burgers.
Breakfast Bread and Strolling Uyghur Neighborhoods
The next morning Dave found a hot nang that we enjoyed for breakfast in the hotel. We went out to check out the famous tombs. There were only a few other people around where other times would have been packed with people.
We saw the Tomb of Amanisahan. Amanisahan was a poetess of the Uyghur Muqam. Her mausoleum is surrounded by a cemetery complex, including the tomb of the former sultan of Yarkent. The rear of graveyard was covered in weeds and the adobe graves there were cracked decaying, albeit at slower than their occupants. This graveyard dates from the 17th century and is the burial place of Royal family members of the Yarkand Uyghur Kingdom.
We strolled into the mosque and walked up the carpeted steps. A sweeper in the yard yelled at us. Oh! Okay, we needed to take off our shoes. We took off our shoes and walked on the carpet again. We were yelled at again. Our next guess was he didn’t want us taking pictures. Dave put the camera away. He yelled at us again. Our next guess was women weren’t permitted. Dave tried to go alone and was yelled at for the fourth time. Okay, maybe he wanted us to leave. So we left.
As the morning turned to afternoon, activity picked up in old town. We made our way to a small market area with a small but growing percentage of the stalls open. The pool halls were busy. There were plenty of people coming and going. We found a corner where they were blow-torch cooking sheep heads and forelegs. There where flat bed donkey carts loaded to the hilt with women wearing colorful scarves, grandmothers and babies often driven by men wearing traditional tall hats. Pomegranates and mandarin oranges stacked in neat little pyramids. We explored the back alleys. We thoroughly enjoyed old town. We weren’t willing to have the limited dishes they were selling. We made our way back to Mustafa’s Hamburgers, the only brick and mortar restaurant that was open, for a late lunch. We picked up a few snacks for later at the grocery store.
