The World's Best Xinjiang Diary Ever: Golden Week Travels 5

The fun never ends.

In Kashgar, at our hotel, we met up with Osmanjan, a Uyghur friend of Tobin's who he'd met in Manchester. He was a tour guide and we met him to see if he could advise us on the best itinerary. I was absolutely desperate to go to Tashkurgan, the town closest to the Tajik border, and we had been told we must see Lake Karakul while we were in Kashgar, but we were pressed for time. He was pretty useless actually, and once he'd gone Catherine and Frankie once again disappeared on a hunt for something and Liam and I checked out some of the guides and maps in the hotel registration. A lovely man came up to us and we asked him about getting to Tashkurgan. It quickly became clear that if we went to Lake Karakul on Hypothetical Day 1, stayed there, and then the following day, Day 2, went on to Tashkurgan, we'd not be able to get back to Kashgar until Day 3. Which we didn't have time for. However this man said, why don't you go straight to Tashkurgan during the day on Hypothetical Day 1, come back in the evening to the lake, stay overnight, and then come back during the day on Day 2? The sheer logic of this plan stunned us. So that was what we did.
The journey, on a minibus leaving from the station near People's Square, took us to Tashkurgan (via Karakul Lake) on a long and winding trip through the mountains of Xinjiang. The scenery was breathtaking, and as perfect as if it had been digitally altered. My photos do not do it justice. I have since been told several times by Mongolian Chinese, whilst looking at my photos, that "Xinjiang is not very beautiful. If you want to see true beauty, go to Mongolia." Biased. We passed the lake and went on a bit further to the small small small town of Tashkurgan. Lake Karakul is in fact in Tajikistan, but the Chinese claim it as theirs. Hmm. I have seen several too many Chinese-sourced maps where they have simply moved the location of the lake to put it into Xinjiang. They did indeed check our passports and visas at one point on the journey but no stamp; we were still officially in China. Tashkurgan itself is actually in China, but is practically in Tajikistan and Pakistan at the same time!

The views from the bus were spectacular, this was the view through the front windscreen for a long part of the journey.

At one of the points that it's virtually compulsory to stop at, for the view.

Frankie and Catherine at the same viewing point, slightly different angle.

Catherine enjoying her bus ride : )

Tashkurgan was extremely Tajik. I had bought a book in Kashgar about Xinjiang which had mentioned the traditional Tajik way of greeting, which depends on who is greeting whom, and tends to involve hand kissing and bowing etc, and we saw it in action here, as well as the traditional Tajik clothes, with very tall hats covered in veils, bizarrely reminiscent of the Spanish mantila. Plus the Tajik people seem to have purple skin! Very strange hue indeed.
We had lunch in a little restaurant where we met a cute chubby baby. On leaving the restaurant we were lukcy enough to catch sight of a traditional rural wedding party - every guest crowded onto the back of big open-topped trucks and making a lot of noise! We were amused to see cows, sheep and tiny baby goats walking the streets alongside the humans.
Tashkurgan is notable for its ancient stone city, which is said to be among the top five preserved in the world (and is, in fact, the best, according to the state literature). We clambered around the walls and foundations of the old city, which offered some amazing views aside from the interest of the ruins themselves, and rather randomly ran into a family from Leeds. Small world, eh. You go to the back of beyond and there's still other Westerners there! Is there anywhere left unexplored these days?
After Tashkurgan we got the last minibus to Karakul Lake. Our plan was to stay in a yurt there. A yurt, if you don't know, is a big circular tent. See my photos. We were met off the bus by a Kyrgyz man named Anaddin (pronounced with the stress placed so it rhymes with Aladdin, not like Anadin Ultra!) and his family. They took us into their guest yurt and lit the stovepipe with dried camel poo to keep us warm. We went to the family yurt for dinner, where we tried pilau for the first time. Truly gorgeous stuff - fried rice mixed with carrots, yellow turnip, and mutton, as well as the occasional additions of onion and sultanas. We also had some bread with it, and though it was a simple meal it sated our hunger and was actually absolutely delicious. Leaving the yurt we looked up at the sky and we were all astonished to see the stars. The sky was not at all affected by light pollution or pollution of any other kind, and I have never seen so many stars. In fact, I didn't even know there were that many! We went to bed wrapped in as many layers as possible, because the air at such a high altitude was cold and thin.

The guy at the restaurant, trying my hat out for size! Note all the baijiu bottles in the background!

Traditional wedding party.

Us four at Tashkurgan's ruined stone city.

Moi, desecrating ancient property by standing on an old wall.

Moooooooooo!

The next day we decided to take a camel ride around the lake. It was pretty cold and we were only wearing our autumn clothes. We waited for our camels to be saddled up as we drank tea in a neighbouring yurt. All the people living in the yurts around the lake are of Kyrgyz ethnicity, which is fairly obvious in their facial shape and features. All the people, but especially the children have very dry skin, are wind bitten and very red from living in the mountains! The woman whose yurt we were in was just amazingly good at spinning wool, using an old fashioned spinning top thing. We could hear camels snorting outside! Soon we were outside with them, and found getting on was not that hard - the camels lie down and you just hop on between the humps! They are covered in layers and layers of blankets and saddling to make it slightly more comfortable but it's still not the best position to sit in. The ride was very bumpy but we found that if you relax it is perfectly okay. I got a shock the first time my camel turned round though! Because they move each side's two legs simultaneously, when they turn, it feels like you're going to fall off, first one side, then the other! My camel belonged to a guy called Dilmurat, and I named my camel Adolf, because he was obviously evil. You could see it in his eyes. By the end though, I totally loved him. He was nice to me : ) Liam's camel was named Angelina (it just suited her), Catherine's was Bernie and Frankie's camel was named Marbiya in honour of our then favourite Uyghur song. We turned the lake, and it very quickly became uncomfortable as we were freezing and saddle sore, and the lads leading our camels were clearly dawdling to get more money from us as it was by per hour. Frankie was the first to snap and just jumped off. Liam later followed suit. Catherine and I stayed on as Liam and Frankie walked ahead, but soon Catherine decided to get down too. Bless her though, she was not quite tall enough to get off and was left dangling off the side of the camel until one of the Kyrgyz boys came to her rescue. It was truly hilarious to watch!
At some point I had decided to stay on the camel for the duration and so I did. The boys got bored partway through and started racing the camels, so I got to experience camel running which is a lot more fun that camel strolling. I also think the bouncing may have slammed some feeling back into my bum. Adolf occasionally lost his footing which was a bit worrying, but he was a tough cookie and I never fell once! I was a bit worried about getting off having seen what had happened to Catherine but when we reached the yurts my camel lowered into a lying position and I very inelegantly (due to numbness of the legs) clambered off. I then ran to the lake's edge to try the water which is said to taste 'sweet' and be the main source of drinking water for the locals. It just tasted like water to me. And didn't look quite so clean close-up, either. I found a bit without foam : D
After the camel ride, which is an experience that I would recommend, but only for a short duration of time because of the pain (!), we went on our merry way back to Kashgar in some random guy's 4x4.
Tashkurgan and Lake Karakul weren't exactly the lap of luxury, but I wouldn't have missed out on them for the world.

Moi. Coldness. Stunning mountains. Fin.