Along the Southern Silk Road, Xinjiang province, China

Following our return from Tashkurgan we stayed another day in Kashgar while we planned our next move. We telephoned Mohammad to ask whether he could, in a single day, take us along the southern silk road from Kashgar to Karghilik, leaving us at the latter. This would be much preferable to the bus-hopping that would otherwise be necessary to visit the towns along this route. Mohammad said he could, and after some haggling we agreed the price.

Early next morning we were on our way, and our first stop was at Yengisar, famous throughout Xinjiang for its knife production. We hoped to visit the knife factory that our travel guidebook stated was located immediately west of the Yengisar Bazaar. But Mohammad stopped at a roadside knife shop and the owner rushed out to guide us inside. We said we wanted to visit the actual knife factory, not just a knife shop. The owner, through Mohammad, told us that the factory had closed down a year ago and shops like his were now the only places where one could see Yengisar's famous knives. Hmmm, I wondered, if the factory has closed, where are the knives coming from now? The pointer on our bullshit meter had moved into the orange zone so we asked Mohammad to take us to the Bazaar and park the taxi immediately to the west of the bazaar. He happily did this and lo and behold we found ourselves at the front entrance to a knife factory. It was open so we went in and we found about ten craftsmen hard at work at their forges and with their hammers and grinders. Each craftsman produces the whole knife from start to finish, including the handle decoration. The factory manager claimed it took a whole day for a craftsman to produce one knife. We watched the entirely manual production processes for awhile, then adjourned to the factory showroom to admire the finished products. After some spirited haggling with the manager, we became the owners of our own Yengisar knife, to be used for cutting fruit in China and as possible protection against barbarians after we return home.

We resumed our journey, stopping next at Yarkand. Here we briefly inspected the 400 year-old mosque and walked down some of the alley ways in the old part of town. Donkey carts rule the streets here. Finally, we completed the last leg of an hour or so to Karghilik where we bid Mohammad farewell and he headed back towards Kashgar after dropping us off at the Communications Hotel adjacent to the bus station. After checking in, we walked around the city square and some of the old winding alleyways at the rear of the mosque. Here, adobe houses are still in vogue though increasingly being replaced with small residences built with small bricks. We had dinner at an Uighur restaurant and ordered chicken. A huge bowl containing three half-fowls arrived at our table, with no implements or plates. Here, people eat with their hands, straight from the serving bowl. So we did likewise, although our arms and the table were pretty messy and greasy by the time we had eaten as much as we could of the flock that had been delivered to us. But it was very good food.

Karakoram Highway to Pakistan, Xinjiang province, China

As he promised, Mohammad was at the front of our Kashgar hotel at 9am on Monday to pick us up to begin our trip along the Karakoram Highway to Tashkurgan, the last sizeable Chinese town before the Pakistan border. First stop after about an hour was the small town of Upal which holds its own weekly market every Monday. This is a smaller, local affair which concentrates on meat, vegetables and fruit. Everything was very fresh, and the walk down butchers’ row was interesting but not for the squeamish. From the cow, goat and sheep's heads and other materials littering the ground, it appeared that the killing hadn't been long finished and the butchers were now hard at work, expertly cutting up the carcasses. We bought some fruit, and hot bread rolls direct from a stone oven.

For the next few hours we drove along the stunning Karakoram Highway which must be one of the most spectacular roads in the world. It has everything – canyons, plateaus, glaciers, snow-capped mountains of 25,000 feet towering over the road, grasslands, and different peoples and settlements. We made many stops to take photos of the different landforms and life along the highway. At one small lake, a perfect reflection of the surrounding multi-coloured landforms created a picture that seemed to belong more in a modern art gallery than in nature. We came across many wild camels, and herds of yaks, sheep and goats tended by Tajik and Kyrgy nomads. Tajik yurts dotted the grasslands and more substantial human adobe mud-brick settlements were located now and then along the highway.

We stopped to visit a Kyrgy family and had tea in their yurt, and the following day on the way back we were invited to have a look inside a Tajik family's adobe house. In both cases we paid them well for the photos they allowed us to take. At one settlement we saw two women cooking bread in an iron pot in a cow dung fire and we offered them a high price for one of their loaves; an offer they happily accepted. Despite the stunning physical beauty of the area, the people are financially very poor and live their lives with the most basic of material supports.

In Tashkurgan we stayed at the Pamir Hotel before making the return journey to Kashgar the following day. Because there's so much variety on the Karakoram Highway we enjoyed the return journey as much as we had the outward leg. At one point on the way back we took a short detour to visit the border with Kazakhstan. Here there was a long row of trucks waiting to complete the necessary documentation to allow them to cross the border. At Tashkurgan we were 70km from the border with Afghanistan and about 200km from the border with Pakistan. We were thinking of visiting the latter but this was not possible as the road forward from Tashkurgan has been shut by the Chinese authorities until further notice. It was a fantastic two days. Mohammad was a very safe driver and he drove slowly so we could enjoy the view rather than continually have to worry about whether the next bend might be our last. He also played relaxing Uighur music in his taxi which added a lot of atmosphere to the journey.

Sunday Market at Kashgar on the Silk Route, Xinjiang province, China

Every Sunday is a big day in Kashgar – the population swells by 50,000 as buyers, sellers and onlookers stream in from near and far to attend one of the biggest bazaars in Asia.  We were up bright and early and went first to the livestock market on the edge of town to see thousands of sheep, goats, cattle, horses and donkeys bustle into the arena.  Each type of animal had its own allocated area, and it was fascinating to watch the Uighur and Tajik farmers and butchers locked in earnest negotiations, going through a buying and selling ritual we didn’t fully understand.  Out the back, prospective purchasers took horses for a test-drive, riding them expertly around a large gravelly yard.

The animals and people across the whole market were in close contact and I reckoned that there must sometimes be broken bones for both man and beast.  We strolled around for about an hour watching all the fascinating, swirling sights and soaking up the intoxicating smells and sounds.  Then we saw a large bull not far from us break free from its handler and charge in our direction.  We leapt to the side to get out of his path but he continued to charge, so we began to run.  Luckily for us, the call of nature intervened to save us.  The bull must have streaked past a cow on heat – this stopped him absolutely dead in his tracks and he proceeded to mount an exhibition of an altogether different kind, prompting an immediate whipping from his owner (or more likely the owner of the cow).  We didn't hang around to see the climax of this particular piece of saleyard theatre, instead taking the opportunity while the bull was otherwise indisposed to flee to the relative sanctuary of the goat and sheep arena where we made another inspection of the fluffy little animals all tethered by the neck in their cute straight rows. Then we sat down with some Uighur farmers to enjoy a bowl of freshly-made goat and vegetable noodles.

We'd had enough excitement for one morning, so we fought our way through the throng to get to the market exit where we hailed a taxi to take us to the Kashgar Bazaar. This occupies several blocks of the city, and pretty well everything imaginable is for sale. The myriad of silk and chilli pepper stalls throughout the bazaar add a lot of colour to the proceedings.

After we'd had our fill of the sights, sounds and smells of this fascinating market, we hailed another taxi to take us to the bus station where we intended to buy a ticket to Tashkurgan near the border with Pakistan and Afghanistan.  But language difficulties intervened and we ended up not at the city centre bus station but on the city outskirts at the Tomb of Abakh Hoja, an Uighur ruler of long ago.  Fortunately another taxi soon arrived and we caught this one back to the city.  This Uighur driver spoke not only some mandarin but also quite a bit of English too, and he introduced himself to us.  We took an immediate liking to Mohammad - he seemed to be the sort of guy who could move a mountain if necessary - and by the time we arrived at the bus station we had closed a deal with him to take us in his taxi on a two-day jaunt to Tashkurgan, leaving tomorrow morning.

Kashgar on the Silk Road, Xinjiang province, China

We flew yesterday with China Southern Airlines from Urumqi to Kashgar, the most westerly city in China. Kashgar lies on the fabled Silk Route, one of the ancient world's greatest merchant routes and melting pots, and used for centuries by travelling merchants from China, India and Europe. Livestock, silk, jade, and a host of other products were hauled in caravan trains along this desert road that stretches for thousands of kilometres. Close by are borders with Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, Afghanistan, Pakistan and India. Xinjiang province is home to China's several million Turkic Uighur people, and Kashgar and the other towns and cities on the Silk Route are the Uighur heartland. The physical appearance of the Uighur people, and their language and music, seem to have more in common with Central Asia and the Middle East than with the remainder of China. In fact, travelling around Kashgar is like travelling in a different country.

Kashgar is an increasingly modern city populated by a growing number of Han Chinese people, but the old Uighur core remains and is still an exotic and atmospheric place to stroll around. We walked to the beautifully restored Id Kah mosque and wandered through the nearby winding alleys of old Kashgar where people still live in adobe houses and donkey carts remain mainstream.

Lake Tianchi near Urumqi, Xinjiang province, China

We booked a day tour to Lake Tianchi east of Urumqi with a local travel agent. The agent said the bus would be big and air-conditioned. But the following morning at 9am, a small minibus arrived to pick us up. We were obviously at the beginning of its pick-up run, and by the time all 14 passengers were on board after making several detours for incorrect pick up points and taking wrong routes etc, it was close to mid-day before we headed for Lake Tianchi. Some of the earlier passengers were already frustrated and started to complain that they were hungry and needed a toilet stop, so yet another stop was made for 15 minutes. Finally we were underway and travelling through the countryside towards Lake Tianchi, located high in the Tian Shan mountain range about 80 km east of Urumqi. It was an interesting drive with desert scenery interspersed with oasis country planted with cereal, nut and fruit crops, and a final steep ascent to the Lake. Although Urumqi is the most landlocked city in the world, almost 4,000 km from the ocean, and very dry, there is a huge variety and amount of fruit available from the oasis plantations. We have enjoyed strawberries, mangoes, dates, apricots, currants, raisins, bananas, pineapples, mangoes, oranges, apples, peaches, nectarines, melons, pistachios, almonds, walnuts and peanuts. As the weather has been hot and our appetites dulled, during the day we have eaten mainly only fruit and nuts.

We arrived at Lake Tianchi at around 2pm, and had a quick lunch with the rest of the group (we were the only westerners) at an Uighur cafe. This was rice and a couple of mutton kebabs, and was very good. Then we were escorted by the Guide to the Lake, but as we are not keen on group travel and all the associated tourist hoo-haa, we crept away to walk around part of the lake by ourselves. Lake Tianchi is quite beautiful, set amongst alpine spruce scenery at an elevation of about 7,000 feet, and watched over by the 18,200 feet-high snow-covered Peak of God. It is hard to believe that such a sight could be so close to the surrounding dry countryside. The air was refreshingly cool and when we'd had our fill of walking (we still had sore legs from Zhangjiajie), we caught a cable car down the side of the mountain to be back at the bus before 5pm, the time the Guide had told us the bus would be leaving.

Tours like these usually include excruciating visits to tourist-trap shops that often involve some sort of product demonstration before the hard-sell begins. Every member of the group is expected to participate, even if you ultimately don't buy anything. We had already stopped for one of these just before we got to the Lake. It appeared to me to be some sort of dry stick exhibition delivered by a salesperson wearing a white lab coat (no doubt to lend some clinical cred), and after the demo was over and we were led into the adjacent saleroom, it became clear that this shop was flogging dried local plant stems and bulbs that no doubt had stupendous therapeutic qualities. We saw one young woman shell out 150 Yuan (the price of three nice dinners for two I winced to myself) for a small bunch of dried stem.

By 5pm we were all quite weary and eager to head back to our hotels. The tour was supposed to conclude with a return to Urumqi by 6pm, but around 7pm when we arrived at the outskirts of Urumqi the Guide shocked everyone by announcing that we still had a jade shop to visit. With one exception (the young woman who had bought the bunch of dried stem at the lake), all the passengers were grumpy (in silence). Most of them, including a very elderly man travelling alone, had onward trains to catch that night, but none of them voiced any objections. We wearily stayed on the bus. It appeared to us that the stop was fruitless as no-one made any purchases. We believe the guide or travel company receives a commission from the shop-owner for such visits, so possibly this ultimately feeds through to a lower price for the tour, so we shouldn't be too cynical. Personally though, we would prefer to pay a slightly higher tour price upfront to avoid having to make those pesky shop stops.

Not long after leaving the jade shop, the driver stopped the bus suddenly in the busy peak-hour traffic and alighted to check one of the tyres, the same one we had noted he had scrutinized intently and kicked a few times before we left the Lake. He returned and conferred with the Guide who then announced to us all that the bus could go no further and the tour was over. Evidently a split in the tyre had grown, allowing a bubble of tube to protrude, and a blowout was imminent should we proceed. Presumably there was no spare wheel as the passengers were asked to leave the bus and find their own way home from here. Amazingly, none of the passengers revolted or even complained much. Some hailed taxis, others darted to nearby bus stops to catch the next public bus. Luckily for us, the Guide must have felt that we two foreigners would be incapable of finding our way back to our hotel for she invited us to catch a taxi with her and she said she would drop us off on the way back to her office.

She then heroically charged into the melee of concrete trucks, semi trailers, buses, cars, motorbikes and bikes and amazingly returned unscathed to the kerb with a taxi in tow. We, and the elderly man whom she had also taken under her wing, jumped in and we headed for the centre of town. We talked to the old man who said that he had to pick up his belongings at his hotel and get to the train station by 9.30pm. Eventually he was dropped off at a pre-arranged spot (but not at his hotel) to be met by a colleague of the Guide who was to accompany him to his hotel. We finally made it back to our hotel just after 9pm, tired and hungry but gratefully in one piece despite the reckless final taxi ride. We wondered whether the old man met his deadline - we very much doubted it.

Another fun day in China. You may start out knowing your destination, but the journey itself is sure to throw up surprises, ensuring a day of new sights and adventure for all. It's great!

Urumqi, Xinjiang province, China

We intended to return to Zhengzhou and catch a long distance train to Urumqi. But on the internet I found some very heavily discounted airfares (70% off) that were barely more costly than train tickets. So the choice was between a 3.5 hour flight or a 35 hour train journey, for about the same cost. The choice was obvious – the only catch was that the discount flight was from Xian, not Zhengzhou. But that was OK – we caught a 7 hour night train from Kaifeng to Xian, arriving at 6am. There we caught the airport bus and within a couple of hours we were winging our way to Urumqi. The night train to Xian from Kaifeng was interesting – the four-berth soft-sleeper tickets were sold out so we had to settle for “hard-sleeper” tickets. This was a bed in a doorless six-bed compartment comprised of two triple bunk beds on either side with a narrow space between. My bed was at the top, barely 18 inches from the carriage roof and Lee Tuan's was in the middle. Neither had sufficient headroom to sit up – you had to slot in and lie down. If there is a choice of bunk, the bottom bunk is the best as there is at least some space to sit up, but all those had been taken.

Fortunately the air conditioning on this packed train was effective with a vent above the bed, so the air was reasonably fresh although the air conditioning plant made more noise than the train engines. This train had started at a very distant place and would still have a long way to go after Xian. We were boarding it for only a small section of its journey. My bed had obviously been used previously by someone else during an earlier part of the train's journey, and the previous occupant had thoughtfully left behind in the bed an upturned can of soft drink and some pulpy material on the sheets that smelled like apple. In regard to the latter, I decided to leave the analysis there and proceed on the assumption that it was apple – some of the alternatives didn't bear thinking about. All the same, I didn't relish the prospect of sleeping on damp sheets redolent of coke and apple. So I laid the cover on the bed and slept on top; fortunately it was warm enough not to need a cover. This problem resolved, I slept reasonably well, as it seemed did the other five people within a toe's reach.

We arrived at Urumqi in the early afternoon after a pleasant flight from Xian with China Eastern Airlines, and checked into the Xinrong Hotel in the centre of the city.

Urumqi is an interesting place with people of several different ethnic backgrounds. It is the capital of Xinjiang province, home to China's several million Muslim Uighur people. Urumqi also has a large and rapidly growing Han Chinese population. In addition there are many Kyrgyzs, Tajiks and Pakistanis. Although thousands of kilometres west of Beijing, Xinjiang iofficially operates on Beijing time, with the result that the sun doesn't set until 10.30pm at this time of year. It's also now quite hot, and many shops shut for a 2.5 hour siesta from 1.30 to 4pm.

Like the rest of China, there are food stalls and restaurants everywhere, although the cuisine here has a strong muslim influence reflecting the composition of the population. A popular Uighur dish is “La Mein”. The noodles in it are freshly made by a noodle maker in every stall who is very skillful at kneading, stretching, swinging and twirling the dough into multiple metre-long strands. The locals usually have noodles, kebabs and flat round naang bread for dinner. Another common local food is a rice dish similar to fried rice but cooked instead with shredded carrots, parsnips, lamb meat, raisins and dates (without any eggs). The rice is normally eaten in the afternoon. We have been very well fed in Urumqi. In addition to all the great street food close by, the Xinrong Hotel's restaurant serves the best food we've seen in a hotel restaurant for a very long time. An excellent dinner there can be had for about $4 each – a large bottle of good Chinese beer is a mere 50 cents extra!

The road traffic throughout China is chaotic and hazardous but is especially so in Urumqi. Elsewhere you can be reasonably confident that the drivers of the vehicles bearing down on you will at least attempt to stop, and magically do, if a collision appears inevitable. But not, we discovered, in Urumqi. Here, many vehicles and their drivers tear around much too fast, displaying an aggressive traffic body language that leaves you in no doubt that you will be mown down in an instant if you put a foot wrong. Green pedestrian lights are uniformly ignored, and defensive driving seems to be an unheard of concept. The hospitals must have to deal with a lot of unnecessary road trauma cases.

Kaifeng, Henan province, China

While in the Zhengzhou area we also took the opportunity to visit the city of Kaifeng, about an hour to the east by train. This city of 5 million once had a serious flooding problem – it was inundated about 400 times over an 800 year period to the early 1900s. The result is that the ancient city is buried under metres of silt below the present-day city, and strict building controls so as not to disturb the historical record beneath. The welcome result for the visitor is a funky town that seems a decade behind the rest of China's cities. The buildings are more old-fashioned, and bicycles much more numerous. We spent two pleasant days here seeing the sights. Kaifeng has a fantastic night market and here we saw something we had not seen before in China – people strolling around the night market in their pyjamas! Apparently it's quite the done thing after dinner and dressing for bed to go for a stroll around the market streets before turning in for the night! To us this seemed OK, if a little weird. For dinner we enjoyed a brace of excellent dumplings in a restaurant in the town square located in a building straight out of the Qing Dynasty.

We visited the beautifully restored Guild Hall, built long ago as a lodging and meeting place by visiting merchants from other provinces. Next stop was a disused bank building that holds a significant place in Chinese government history. Liu Shaoqi was a senior member of the Party, and Mao's intended successor. Apparently he was the Party's leading theoretician, and wrote several books including the classic How to be a Good Communist. Obviously a good communist himself, he rose to be the Chairman of the People's Republic of China for about eight years. But he was purged during the Cultural Revolution and banished to Kaifeng where he was locked up in a room in a disused bank, and he died here. But Liu has since been posthumously rehabilitated, and the room where he was held and where he died is now open to the public as both a memorial and tribute to his life. We looked around the room and at the bed where he had his last sleep, and inspected his clothes and shaving equipment still neatly displayed in a case. One corner of the room is decorated with bunches of flowers.

Then it was time for lunch, and after walking a little further on, we chanced upon a roast duck restaurant with a line of people streaming into it, always a good sign. Better still, we learned that a whole roast duck was only 42 Yuan (about AUD$6.30), or strangely that a half duck was only 20 Yuan. Hmmmm, I thought, perhaps we should order two half ducks. But we steadied ourselves and resolved that a whole duck for two would be going too far, despite the tempting arbitrage opportunity. So we ordered a half duck, some green vegetables, rice and a large bottle of Chinese beer. Everything was excellent, and after an hour we spilled back out into the sunshine with full tummies and a wallet only 34 Yuan lighter. It was at this moment that I decided I could move to Kaifeng and settle down. But that would have to wait awhile as we now had onward tickets and another train to catch in a few hours time.