In my last post I mentioned that we would take the plane to Kashgar the next day. So on the 9th at 8.55 am we got on our plane. It was a bit confusing at first because the flight didn't appear on the screens in the terminal. At the check-in counter however there was no problem and we got our boarding card, which said we had to wait at gate 21. When Jamie wanted to check in her bag, the scanner picked up two magnets she bought in the Philipines. For some stupid reason she couldn't bring them with her. She therefore had to take out everything in her bag in order to find them. This took around half an hour. It's still unclear why she had to take them out anyway. Arriving at gate 21 after that, the flight was still not on the monitor. Eventually we found it, but it said gate 2. Confused, we asked the personal there what the deal is with this flight. He assured us that we had to wait at gate 21. Eventually we found out that it is actually an international flight to Islamabad in Pakistan and it would make a stopover at Kashgar. That's why it also didn't appear on the monitors in the domestic terminal. Quite confusing...
All 'problems' asside, we arrived at Kashgar as planned and took a taxi to Noor Bish hotel, because according to Lonely Planet this was the cheapest option for us. Arriving there we were just refused, saying the hotel is closed, while we seen guests around! Unbelievable... And it gotten worst from there; in the next hotel, when the receptionist saw us approaching, he just duck under the counter! I've never seen anything like this, and it looks stupid as well, because ofcourse we have seen him do it. Not the brightest guy I say...
The third hotel was friendlier and told us it was full but gave us a suggestion for another hotel. We didn't follow it because we found another one instead. It's called the Seman hotel and we are staying there currently. It's a good hotel and it has a small travel agency in the lobby. After check in and organising the room we went to bar called John's cafe for breakfast and travel information in the area. We really want to do a camel trip through the desert and we were hoping he could arrange this for us. This was not to be. The only thing they had was 1 hour thingy in a small part of the desert. It's supossed to be really touristy so this didn't appeal to us. We went to the agency in the lobby. The boss of that agency spoke very good English and knows how to sell his tours. He first insisted we should be friends, well, why not... and after that we started discussing what we wanted. He said he could offer us the camel trip and told us the price. It all sounded really good and we went to the city afterwards, considering our options and to count the days we have to see what we could do. I think this was really the first time I had a real cultureshock here in Asia. This area of China really has nothing to do with well, China. The majority, by far, are Arabs. You won't hear much Chinees here, and the people don't look like Chinese either. It's actually quite a weird, or sad, story. It's obvious that China just want his part for its oil, or just to keep the country big or whatever. The city has one of the biggest statues of Mao in the whole of China, which, is totally misplaced for this part since the people just have nothing in common with the Chinese and their history. The government treaths this minority as terrorists, and since 9/11 presure has just been increased. This ofcourse with approval from Washington.
Back to the first day however. We felt quite unwelcome ofcourse after our arrival, but this changed rapidly after we just walked around and checked out the different places. Kashgar is famous for its huge sunday market, but there is a bazaar which is open daily and we visited that one. They sell a lot of different cloth and carpets, as well as knives and other Arab style stuff. Ofcourse when we passed the different stands everybody started shouting to try to sell their goods, but we didn't buy anything that day. We walked back after this to our hotel and had dinner at John's cafe again. After that we went back to the travel agency in the lobby to discuss the trip and quickly decided to do a three day camel trip through the desert. We discussed the details and bargained a bit untill we had a satisfaying price. We pinned the starting day on monday so we still have some days to do different stuff. We wanted to go to Karakul lake the next day and mentioned this to him. He then said that he had a van going there to pick up a tourgroup and we could catch a ride with the van for the same price as the public bus. This sounded really good to us and saved us the trouble for finding out where to catch the bus. We paid the deposit for the camel trip and asked if he could inquire for us what the train schedule is to Shanghai on the 20th, the day we want to leave. He agreed to do this for us and so the day ended good for us after a weird start...
Another thing that's a bit odd about this place is that they work with different times. First there is Beijing time, where the whole country should oblige to, and secondly there is local time, since Beijing time and the sun cycle don't much. Local time is two hours behind Beijing time. We decided to just skip the whole jetlag and just live on Beijing time. We also found out this has a lot of advantages for us. We agreed the driver would pick us up at 8 am local time. Thus, this is 10 am Beijing time, two more hours of sleep for us! After we set off that morning we first had to pick up a tour guide which was taking care of the group. This guy spoke good English and was fun to talk to. The total trip was a 5 hour drive and on the way the driver picked up three Israelies and their bikes, so the van was full. They countryside we passed through was full with mountains but completely different then the ones in Yunnan. The area looked very rough and rocky and no plants or trees grew there. It looked as though Osama Bin Laden himself could hide here. This part of China is also really close to Pakistan (the van was actually going there after dropping us off), and my view from Pakistan sort off looked as this landscape. On the way there was also a checkpoint where we had to show our passports. I have no idea why they have one there, but anyway, it just took 20 minutes and we could continue. We arrived at the lake at around 2.30pm Beijing time (12.30 local) where we found out we really underestimated the place. Nobody told us (even the Lonely Planet didn't mention this) that the lake was at a 3.600 meter hight and therefore cold. The wind started blowing and it started raining soon after we arrived and it felt as though we would freeze there. After a while it all got better and the sun started shining so it all got a bit better. We had lunch there and checked in into our accommodation. As the pictures in my webalbum show, we didn't have a hotel room but a 'Yurz' to our disposal. This is a sort of hut were the locals live in, and they built some for hiring out. The yurz was completely empty and instead of beds there were some blankets/matrasses and pillows we had to use. Surprisingly enough, after piling up enough of those it became really comfortable and this way of sleeping seriously can competer with regular bed. That day we decided to jsut hang around our yurz because the clouds looked quite treathening. It wouldn't be a good idea to circumnavigate the lake that day. We just passed the time with taking pictures, playing some mariokart on my nintendo ds and pee at weird places in the nature (we had no choice). At one point the guy who rents out the yurz (I don't know the plural for this word) asked us if we would want to have dinner at his place and asked how much shish kebabs we wanted, 5 or 10? We quickly said 10, because well, we wanted 10. Not really knowing of what we asked 10 pieces from we wondered what we could expect. Arriving at his place we noticed we were the only ones there. His wife gave us first a bowl of thick noodles with all kinds of stuff mixed in. This was really tasteful, although Jamie didn't really think so. After that the kebabs came and they were basically (really good) meatsticks, sort of like the ones I had in Shanghai before. And... we had 10 each! A bit too much perhaps, but because they were so good we just ate them. After dinner we went back, it started to get dark and we decided to have a beer before heading back. We asked a woman where we could get beers, and she directed her to her own tent where her husband(??) asked us to come in and sit down. And there we sat again, with a family, having beers this time. The tent looked really basic, but very practical, so that it seemed bigger than that it actually was. We found out that these people, and probably all of them that lived in the village, go to Kashgar on sunday to buy goods at the market, and then live on it for the week. Quite something different than what we are used too. After the beers it was already dark and especially windy and therefore freezing cold and we quickly got back to our yurz. We played some more mario kart and went to sleep afterwards.
We woke up the next day at 8.30 Beijing time and started to walk around the lake. It started well, but after about an hour and a half we ran into a swampy area which was very wet and we good only continue by taking our shoes off and wade through the various small creeks. The water was very cold and I was all too happy when I finally could put my shoes on. It took us a while to found out the best way to reach the high part again, but finally we made it. We walked to last bit on a fast pace since we saw dark clouds approaching. Eventually we came back to our camp (3.5 hours after departure) only just before it stated raining. The idea was to wait for the tour guide from previous day to discuss if the driver could take us to the sand dunes we saw on the way the day before and looked really appealing. We met him at around 12 am local time and started discussing a price. It was too high for us and another car was about to take off and offered a lower price. The big idea was to rent a yurz that place, walk around a bit and go back to Kashgar the next day. When we came to the dunes, they looked impressive, but not so that we wanted to stay the rest of the day. We decided to just go back to Kashgar the same day. We took some pictures and headed back afterwards. We came back in Kashgar at 5.30 pm Beijing time and took a local bus (at 10 cents each) to our hotel. Arriving there we checked in again and reclaimed our luggage which we left behind there. We were quite hungry by then and decided to go for street food today. There was one street we saw before which sold various food on so we went there. We took different stuff and some drinks and headed back to the hotel to eat it. After that we went to go on the internet at John's where I am now...
The plan for the coming week is as following. Tomorrow we want to go south to various smaller villages which are appearantly still traditionally Arab and stay the night in one of them. We second day want to visit some old ruins that are left from the ancient silk roads in the desert before heading back to Kashgar. On Sunday we want to be here for the big market. On monday we are going to start with the camel trip which will last untill wednesday evening. On thursday we will stay in Kashgar to relax and probably visit the old town part. Finally on friday we will leave for Shanghai on a three day train ride, back to (real) China...
Thank you, bye bye!
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