Down the Karakoram Highway
Urumqi, Xingiang, China, June 27
Last Sunday (June 25) I got a taxi out to the weekly livestock market early in the morning, before my bus along the Karakoram highway. There was a bit of mutual incomprehension with the cabbie since, having not seen any metered cabs since Ankara, I tried to negotiate a price for the ride in advance. Anywhere in the Caucasus or Central Asia, getting in a cab without a price first agreed upon is asking for trouble. After a couple of minutes he figured out what was going on and tapped on the meter until I looked at it and understood. The market was pretty good, but no better than the ones I'd seen in Turkmenistan or Uzbekistan. There were some two-humped Bactrian camels, which was nice.
The bus to Tashkurgan, which is as far as you can go down the Karakoram highway without a Pakistani visa, left on time but quickly fell behind schedule. The trip ended up taking 11 hours, instead of the 6 hours I had expected. We had to stop several times for road construction--it was clear that the spring floods really tore up the road every year, and that keeping it in good shape was a full-time job. Where we were actually on the road, instead of on a bumpy detour, it was very good. All the sharp curves have guardrails, and the shoulder is always at least a few feet off the road surface. The stories I had heard of how scary the Karakoram Highway was are obviously out of date, or maybe they apply only on the Pakistani side.
The scenery was amazing, with a couple of 7000+ meter peaks visible. Every few minutes there would be a mountain vista that would tempt you to stop and marvel on just about any other road. We passed several small settlements, and an alpine lake where several of the passengers got out to go trekking in the surrounding country. One of them was a young Chinese woman who, as soon as I had seen her, had struck me as somehow odd. It took a few minutes to realize that I hadn't seen a woman dressed as she was (fairly low top, narrow shoulder straps, definitely no bra) anywhere in Central Asia. The man sitting next to me, an elderly Kyrgyz, clearly did not approve. But I noticed it took him about an hour to stop looking off to the side to verify that she was still sitting there and still dressed in this flagrantly immoral fashion.
I had hoped to catch a late bus back to Kashgar, but our late arrival stopped that. I ran into some trekkers heading into Pakistan the next day and swapped stories.
The bus back the next day (June 26) also took longer than I expected, but only 8 hours. I arrived just in time to get a 24-hour sleeper bus from Kashgar to Urumqi. It had the same design as the bus I'd ridden from Osh, but was in much better shape, and the bunks had seatbelts. But we were on expressways the whole time and didn't end up needing them. There was a pretty good view of the Tien Shan mountains to the north, and at a few high passes I could see well into the Taklamakan Desert to the south. Most of the passengers were Uighurs, and the more devout of them performed their prayers at the appropriate times, facing toward the western (rear) end of the bus.
To keep the road in good shape, road crews were going along the sandy shoulder and filling in the small gullies, formed by the intermittent heavy rains, with shovels. I guess this kept the gullies from getting big enough to undermine the road and cause washouts. It seemed like a very hot and unending job.
In Urumqi I hope to meet with a high-school friend of mine who is visiting China with her husband (he's involved with setting up the production of the Lion King musical in Shanghai). After that I plan to stop at Turpan to the southeast and then probably go directly to Xian if I can.
I don't know if any of the kosher Chinese restaurants in New York are run by Hui, but their cooking could easily form the basis of an authentic Chinese cuisine. From what I found in the restaurant I visited, it's pretty much northern Chinese food (mostly wheat instead of rice), but with lamb or beef substituted for pork. I liked it.
Last Sunday (June 25) I got a taxi out to the weekly livestock market early in the morning, before my bus along the Karakoram highway. There was a bit of mutual incomprehension with the cabbie since, having not seen any metered cabs since Ankara, I tried to negotiate a price for the ride in advance. Anywhere in the Caucasus or Central Asia, getting in a cab without a price first agreed upon is asking for trouble. After a couple of minutes he figured out what was going on and tapped on the meter until I looked at it and understood. The market was pretty good, but no better than the ones I'd seen in Turkmenistan or Uzbekistan. There were some two-humped Bactrian camels, which was nice.
The bus to Tashkurgan, which is as far as you can go down the Karakoram highway without a Pakistani visa, left on time but quickly fell behind schedule. The trip ended up taking 11 hours, instead of the 6 hours I had expected. We had to stop several times for road construction--it was clear that the spring floods really tore up the road every year, and that keeping it in good shape was a full-time job. Where we were actually on the road, instead of on a bumpy detour, it was very good. All the sharp curves have guardrails, and the shoulder is always at least a few feet off the road surface. The stories I had heard of how scary the Karakoram Highway was are obviously out of date, or maybe they apply only on the Pakistani side.
The scenery was amazing, with a couple of 7000+ meter peaks visible. Every few minutes there would be a mountain vista that would tempt you to stop and marvel on just about any other road. We passed several small settlements, and an alpine lake where several of the passengers got out to go trekking in the surrounding country. One of them was a young Chinese woman who, as soon as I had seen her, had struck me as somehow odd. It took a few minutes to realize that I hadn't seen a woman dressed as she was (fairly low top, narrow shoulder straps, definitely no bra) anywhere in Central Asia. The man sitting next to me, an elderly Kyrgyz, clearly did not approve. But I noticed it took him about an hour to stop looking off to the side to verify that she was still sitting there and still dressed in this flagrantly immoral fashion.
I had hoped to catch a late bus back to Kashgar, but our late arrival stopped that. I ran into some trekkers heading into Pakistan the next day and swapped stories.
The bus back the next day (June 26) also took longer than I expected, but only 8 hours. I arrived just in time to get a 24-hour sleeper bus from Kashgar to Urumqi. It had the same design as the bus I'd ridden from Osh, but was in much better shape, and the bunks had seatbelts. But we were on expressways the whole time and didn't end up needing them. There was a pretty good view of the Tien Shan mountains to the north, and at a few high passes I could see well into the Taklamakan Desert to the south. Most of the passengers were Uighurs, and the more devout of them performed their prayers at the appropriate times, facing toward the western (rear) end of the bus.
To keep the road in good shape, road crews were going along the sandy shoulder and filling in the small gullies, formed by the intermittent heavy rains, with shovels. I guess this kept the gullies from getting big enough to undermine the road and cause washouts. It seemed like a very hot and unending job.
In Urumqi I hope to meet with a high-school friend of mine who is visiting China with her husband (he's involved with setting up the production of the Lion King musical in Shanghai). After that I plan to stop at Turpan to the southeast and then probably go directly to Xian if I can.
I don't know if any of the kosher Chinese restaurants in New York are run by Hui, but their cooking could easily form the basis of an authentic Chinese cuisine. From what I found in the restaurant I visited, it's pretty much northern Chinese food (mostly wheat instead of rice), but with lamb or beef substituted for pork. I liked it.
posted by jeros | 2:46 PM
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