Back in Kashgar

Transport hassle

Today, we move from Tashkurgan to Kashgar, the last point on our trip.  I had organised via WeChat messaging, for an MPV and driver to take us there for CNY800 (door-to-door).

When he turned up at 1100, he saw the three white faces with me and promptly said that he couldn’t take us.  I had told him that I was Malaysian but I didn’t mention that the others weren’t.

I’m guessing that he was an illegal transport operator.  While I could pass of as a family or a local at checkpoints, the three white faces couldn’t.

It took us a while to flag down a taxi on the road to take us to the bus station, where there would be options such as vans or minibuses.  Just as we had loaded up our taxi, another taxi pulled up.

The first taxi driver knew the second and the latter could take us all the way to Kashgar without having the hassle of going to the station and waiting or sorting anything further.

And the price of CNY600 was much less than the MPV that I had organised, even though the taxi would be less spacious.  I couldn’t believe our luck.

We transferred our luggage into the second taxi and called by a depot to do some paperwork before leaving Tashkurgan in earnest at 1125.

Journey to Kashgar

The ride to Kashgar was surprisingly scenic.  I had considered some sightseeing stops at a glacier and a lake along the way if it had been easy enough to organise with a driver, but that hadn’t been the case.

In any case, we’ve probably had more than our share of such scenery and whatever there is in China would probably be overcrowded and highly commercialised.

The other surprise was that we were climbing for quite a bit of the trip at first, up to about 13000 ft.  We had a couple of close calls, the first with a yak running across the road suddenly and the second with a car pulling in front of us.  The driver appeared to be sleepy after a while, so we took a lunch break.

We descended to Kashgar, at an elevation of 4170 ft, and were dropped off near the old city around 1730.  That was a total of about 5h15 in the car plus breaks (toilet, lunch and passport check).  The journey had been longer than I had expected.  Despite the roads being excellent, the speed limit was low at around 80 km/h.

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In Kashgar

It was about 5 min walk through the fake old city to get to the delightful Muxia Homestay.

I had booked Jo a room on the ground floor to avoid the stairs but it was a bit dark and rather close to reception.  We managed to change our room so that she could have ours, making for a more comfortable 3-night stay.

While I was attempting to do that, M kinda barged into the conversation trying to sort out her situation.  She had booked 3 nights but wanted to stay only 2 nights with the 3^rd night undecided.  With the staff not speaking English, I could not help her while our own situation was being resolved.

We took dinner near the mosque in a large local restaurant, feasting on skewers, shredded potatoes and a salad of cucumber and boiled peanuts.  It’s a strange kind of feeling coming back to Kashgar with Kim, having been here together in 1998 when it was a completely different place.  I was here 2 years ago though, having crossed over from Kyrgyzstan.