Xinjiang Trip Day 5 (24-3-2007)
Given what was effectively a 5am start I got up and dressed without showering. I had some Uigur baklava I’d picked up in Wulumuqi, but skipped breakfast and headed out to wait for Mr. Tang and the driver. My stomach was feeling bad, not diarrhea but just a pain that felt like it would get worse if I ate anything. The food in Kashgar was distinctly dirtier than anywhere else I had been in China and I guess I was feeling the effects.
The car turned up just late enough for me to wonder if the driver had forgotten about us, I hopped in, and after filling up the tank we headed out into the countryside. After an hour or two the driver stopped off at a mosque for morning prayers. A lot of mosques around Kashgar have educational and propaganda slogans painted on their outside walls. In this case the worshippers were reminded to cherish female babies as much as male ones. We were stopped for 15 minutes or so and I wondered whether this delay was going to be repeated another five (or should it be seven?) times. It turned out that the driver only made one prayer stop though. I guess he was not too devout.
Soon after it got light, about 3 hours driving from Kashgar, we reached a military checkpoint in the foothills of a mountain range. As we got out of the car and the driver headed towards the sentry post I realized that I was going to be expected to produce my passport, which was back in my hotel room. I hadn’t realized that a passport was going to be required. Although we were going to visit a border down we were not going to be crossing any border. I hadn’t counted on the whole mountain area being a restricted zone.
The sentries had already seen us so it was too late to ask the driver if I should just lie down in the back of the car and hope for the best. Mr. Tang had the pained expression of someone realizing that sharing a car might not have been such a good idea after all. Forgetting my passport was potentially going to mess things up for everybody. It was a massive buggeration!
I nervously followed the others up to the century post. I was hoping we could sweet talk our way through but didn’t have much confidence that the driver would be able to pull that off. Rather than a talkative charmer he was a quiet type who responded slowly but straightforwardly to questions. The guards told us that everyone needed either a passport or a Chinese national ID card to enter the mountain area and we would have to drive back to Kashgar to get mine. Of course given the distance driving back would mean canceling the whole trip. We then asked about other possibilities for resolving the situation.
We retreated to the car and held a conference. Mr. Tang was a frequent visitor to China as representative of the Fukokaka government and I sounded him out on the possibility of bribing them. He thought it would be worth a try so I wandered up alone and tried my ‘bribe an official’ routine. The officer in charge was apparently in a little barracks a distance beyond the checkpoint and not to be disturbed so there was nothing to do but try and chat with the two young guards manning the checkpoint itself. I asked if they were married, hoping to then ask about their children, comment sympathetically on the expense of raising a family, and then pass them RMB200 (Mr. Tang advised RMB 50, but I thought the situation looked more desperate than that) while urging them to buy something nice for their kids. Unfortunately neither of them were married. I asked them where they were from and whether they got many chances to visit home. They were not very communicative but eventually admitted to being from Turpan and some place in Gansu respectively. I suggested they buy something for their parents next time they visited home and tried to pass the money over, but they told me firmly that this checkpoint did things strictly according to the rules. I was both impressed and disappointed.
We were in a true bind. The guards wouldn’t let Mr. Tang continue in the car while I remained at the checkpoint to wait for the daily bus from the Pakistani border – expected to pass around noon. They said I was not to be left in the area alone, but themselves refused to take responsibility for me because it was apparently against the regulations. I wasn’t allowed to wait on the roadside without the car, and nor was I allowed to wait inside the checkpoint where they could guard me. There was nothing to do but wait, so wait we did.
After two hours, during which about five cars drove up into the mountains and not a single car came down, we were beckoned over to the guard post. Our plight had eventually been relayed to the commanding officer and he had decided to come down and resolve it. The commanding officer was a smiling contrast to the nervous and reticent young guards. He waved us into the office, offered us tea and cigarettes, and sat us down for a lecture. We were told it would be a terrible shame if two people who had traveled such a long way were stopped just short of their destination. Mr. Tang had wisely introduced himself to the guards as an overseas Chinese living in Japan rather than a Japanese, which strictly speaking was true (his passport listed his household as being from Shanghai despite him being born in Japan). The officer observed that an overseas Chinese could almost certainly be trusted to be the guarantor of a foreigner in a delicate border region, and that provided Mr. Tang was willing to be my guarantor and we promised to return the same day and travel no closer to the Pakistani border than Tashkurkan, then there should be no problem in letting us through. The lecture finished with a reminder on the importance of carrying one’s passport when overseas, after which we were asked to register our details, told to check in again on our way back to Kashgar, and allowed to continue on our way.
Past the military checkpoint the scenery became dramatic. We entered a narrow and rocky river valley flanked by sheer mountains. Debris from rock falls occasionally littered the road and the car traveled slowly. We passed a hot springs area. Eventually the mountains ended and we emerged on a high plateau with an altitude of just over 3000 meters, ringed by ice cloaked mountains. The highest of the mountains were over 7000 meters high. Part way across the plateau the driver suddenly stopped the car and started checking the engine. We had scarcely seen another car and I was worried there was some problem. There seemed to be no problem though and after a few minutes we continued. We passed occasional clusters of Kazakh yurts, but there were almost no people to be seen.
We passed Lake Karakul without stopping, planning to stop on the way back instead, and climbed up from the plateau and across a ridge. At the top of the ridge a sign announced we were entering the Tajik autonomous county. We descended into another plateau, this one more heavily settled. Every few kilometers we passed groups of people walking along the road. The people were mostly Tajiks but there were a few Uigurs too. The Tajiks tended to wear black and red embroidered costumes. The Tajik women were especially distinct, wearing circular flat topped hats with veils that covered the hair but not the face. The driver sometimes stopped to talk to the Uigurs and, I think, offer to drive them for a fee. He ignored the Tajiks.
Eventually we reached Tashkurkan and drove through the two street town and on to the Stone Fortress. The dramatic location was more impressive than the fort itself, the clay bricks of which had been badly eroded by the elements. Entry to the fort was supposed to be by ticket, but the tiny number of tourists during the winter meant that nobody was around to collect money. The fort was deserted except for large black birds (probably crows) and a young local couple having a picnic. The high altitude made climbing around the fort tiring. We enjoyed the views for a while and then headed down to the town.
The town was an interesting mix of Tajiks, Uigurs and a few resident or visiting Pakistanis. My stomach was still feeling bad but I wanted to at least try a Tajik restaurant. Unfortunately the driver was resolutely opposed to the idea, saying the Tajik food was non-Halal and that in any case he couldn’t communicate with Tajiks to order food. Since we needed to buy the driver lunch for the sake of politeness it was a bit awkward to eat separately from him and we ended up eating in a Uigur restaurant. The driver commented that the meal was more expensive than it would have been in Kashgar. Apparently the small number of local Uigurs means Halal meat has to be transported in. The food was OK, the usual noodles and kebabs, but I didn’t eat much.
We took a walk around town for 20 minutes or so while the driver waited. There were only two streets to explore, mostly containing shops. Apparently Pakistanis cross the border on vice holidays, and there were restaurants and stores selling booze as well as about four brothels as evidence of this. Nothing much seemed to be going on though. Maybe the Pakistanis only come over at certain times. There was also a shuttered up fake McDonalds. Again the town itself probably wasn’t as interesting as its location, surrounded as it was by high mountains.
After seeing our fill we began the drive back to Kashgar, stopping at Lake Karakul on the way. The lake itself probably looks nicer in summer. The lake was frozen when we passed, the Khazak yurts were deserted, and we only stopped for five minutes or so. The driver picked up a few Uigurs on the way back to Kashgar, including an old man with what looked like gold dentures going into town to buy medicine, and a young Uigur nurse on her way to work. The old man didn’t speak Chinese but the nurse did and asked incredulously if I was really a foreigner.
We arrived back in Kashgar very late, probably 10pm or so in Beijing time. I texted Mina and apologized for the delay but she said she was not up to coming out. Fair enough. She might have had second thoughts about her offer of the previous day. Or maybe she thought I had deliberately delayed contacting her so as to cut down on the time available for dinner and get her straight back to my hotel. Or maybe the whole thing had just been a game.
After resting for a couple of hours I took a long walk around town looking for food that wasn’t going to upset my stomach further. In the end I couldn’t find anything still open that looked appetizing, so just grabbed some fruit and cakes from a roadside vendor and had a snack in my room before going to sleep.
