6th- 10th August
A different world
Leaving Kyrgyz soil, we instantly know we are crossing the most culturally significant border of our trip so far. Gone are the friendly officials, the slightly chaotic bureaucracy, and the laid back Central Asian manner we have become so used to.
Our passports are checked by 14 different people during the three hour process; the car interior is disassembled and every box, bag, cubby hole emptied is searched. All along the Irkeshtan Pass, the 30km border area that comprises China’s easiest overland crossing point to Central Asia, we are flagged down by brusque, robotic Chinese soldiers brandishing red and green flags, their eyes transfixed on us as they rigidly ensure we comply with every regulation.
At customs, our final stop before we can enter China, our maps and guide books are scrutinised to ensure compliance with Chinese regulation geography. Our Chinese road maps are OK (thankfully, as they were not cheap) but our guide book contains maps depicting Taipei as the capital of Taiwan. This is not allowed – here, Taiwan is officially part of China and as such its capital is Beijing. After some negotiations, we are able to keep our guidebook, with the relevant maps ripped out and disposed of. Although annoyed, we have a handy insight into what we can expect during our time here.
Xinjiang Autonomous Region
We are only spending 4 nights in China for now, purely as a means to entering Pakistan without transiting Afghanistan, which is currently particularly hard to do with your own vehicle.
This part of China, Xinjiang Autonomous Region (supposedly autonomous anyway) is the most far flung Westerly outpost from China, the westernmost areas being closer to Istanbul than to Beijing. The native people here, Uighurs, are an ancient Central Asian race with far more in common with the Kyrgyz and Kazakh than the Chinese. Indeed, this was an independent country until 1955; alas for the locals their own self governance wasn’t up to scratch and the Chinese stepped in to ‘assist them’.
The region comprises one sixth of China’s total land mass, with a population of only 20 million people. It also contains around 30% of China’s natural resources: it is not hard to see why the Chinese wanted to occupy the area.
Kashgar
Despite the Chinese, we enjoy our two day stopover in Kashgar, mainly because of our delightful Uighur guide, Assif. He is cheerful, highly knowledgeable and helpful, and rather unexpectedly, extremely frank on the current situation in Xinjiang - we were expecting a dogmatic Chinese guide, full of interminable statistics on China and the wonders of their Communist Party.
Depressingly, little remains of old Kashgar. We spend a relaxing afternoon wandering round the old city, with its narrow streets and adobe (mud and straw built around a timber frame) houses that nearly touch each other above the street, watching the bustle of local Uighur life. Traditional crafts are alive and well here: metal workers line the streets, hammering away, fabricating everything from kettles to copper cooking pots, bathtubs to knives. Musical instrument-makers tirelessly carve intricate designs on local guitar-like instruments. Everywhere people are selling Uighur bread, shashlik and noodles. It’s a lovely place to wander through, but unfortunately it doesn’t take long.
Most of Kashgar has recently been converted into a modern Chinese city, full of wide boulevards lined with neon-clad skyscrapers. The Chinese have been systematically demolishing the old town and forcibly relocating the locals into faceless Chinese Soviet apartment blocks in the suburbs. Most locals we speak with reckon that within three years nothing will remain of old Kashgar, one of the most important and ancient stops along the old Silk Route.
In addition to the demolition, the government is incentivising Han Chinese to relocate to Xinjiang: the 20m population now comprises around 8m Uighur, 2m Kazakhs and Kyrgyz who were (unfortunately for them) the wrong side of the border when the Chinese arrived, and around 10m Han Chinese. The idea is to dilute the local population and suppress all native nationalistic tendencies: this doesn’t appear to be working, as bombings in Kashgar last year just before the Olympics, and in Urumchi (the regional capital) in July this year testify.
It’s not hard to understand local frustration here. Whilst the Han Chinese move in, obliterating the local city and way of life, the Uighurs and other minorities here cannot obtain passports, bank loans are a near impossibility, and any governmental aid meant for the impoverished rural communities is almost entirely swallowed up by regional level corruption. They really are second class citizens in their own country.
The bombings have been met with a firm hand. While we are here, there is a total block on any internet usage, international phone calls and text messages. We, like everyone else, have zero contact with the outside world. The same happened last year during the Olympics, only then the land borders were also closed. Perhaps that is why no-one knows about the internal goings on in this area, compared to the much publicised affairs of Tibet, Xinjiang’s equally unlucky neighbour to the south.
Soldiers
As we wander the streets of the Chinese parts of the city with our Italian friends from Kyrgyzstan, the most memorable thing we see, constantly, is the vast numbers of soldiers. Intimidatory and robotic, some platoons patrol the streets in huge trucks whilst others are set up in sand-bagged checkpoints at strategic checkpoints around the city. There are 10m soldiers in the Chinese army; around 30% of them are currently based in Xinjiang. That’s a lot of soldiers for a population of 20m - and the natives are left in no doubt as to which part of the population they are watching.
Invasion
They are a paranoid bunch, too: one night, even the suspicion of us having taking a photo of some of them parading around our hotel car park brings a platoon of them storming into our hotel room at 9pm, accompanied by the very embarrassed and rather scared hotel manager. We are about to go to bed and not wearing much: Nina takes refuge in the bathroom to clothe herself whilst I attempt to stop them searching everything in sight. Nina emerges and between us we banish the majority back into the corridor with some stern words (neither of us will tolerate such behaviour from anyone, Chinese soldiers or not). Finally we are left with just the hotel manager, the aggressive and grim faced military security officer and one of his junior acolytes.
The military security officer demands to see our camera. We are pretty certain there is nothing on there which could be viewed as illegal or problematic but to be sure, I insist the camera is in our car, and lead them downstairs to look at our little camera, which lives in the glove box. We know this isn’t what they’re after, but it allows Nina to double check the big camera plus gives us a little wry satisfaction on being able to lead them on a wild goose chase and waste their time. Sure enough, they aren’t satisfied with the little camera, so with a revelatory ‘Ahh, that camera’ I lead the little troop back to our bedroom, where we can now show them all of our delightful photos of Kyrgyzstan on the big camera. We do show them all of our photos and eventually, bored but seemingly satisfied / disappointed, they troop off. The hotel manager apologizes profusely for the interruption, leaving us with the words of warning: “Things are very difficult here at the moment. Please be careful”. Don’t worry – we get the message!
Escape to the mountains
On August 9th, we drop in to see the famous Sunday animal market before departing Kashgar. It is the largest such market in Central Asia, drawing tens of thousands of traders every Sunday. It is indeed a seething, pungent mêlée of sheep, cattle and donkeys, plus the occasional camel, all being traded furiously by their Uighur owners.
We then head south west along the Karakhoram Highway (literally translated as ‘Black rocks high road’), which we won’t leave for a week. We travel through some stunning but harsh mountain scenery to Tashkorgan, which nestles in a green valley at 3100 metres, where we spend the night on the way to the Pakistan border. Another ancient Silk Route outpost, unfortunately most of the old stone fort (the only building of interest) was destroyed during the Cultural Revolution in the 70’s.
Luckily we start early to get through the Chinese border in good order. Although the car is not searched as thoroughly as on our way in, the paperwork takes hours as some miserable, anally-retentive customs official re-checks all of our permits with the customs office in Kashgar. Why this is necessary, when we are leaving, is completely beyond us. But finally he’s done and we expect to receive our exit stamps that will allow us to proceed to the border, but we are ushered into a small office.
Being ‘ushered into a small office’ is never a particularly good thing in customs terms, as we have come to realise – the best you can hope for is just more delays. That is indeed the case here: as a pièce de resistance, the Chinese customs officials have conjured up yet greater levels of bureaucracy, procrastination and incompetence. The five of them now assigned to deal with us finally admit that the obligatory soldier required to accompany us to the border (so we don’t take photos of illegal or forbidden things on the way) was actually sent to the border, without us, some hours ago. Thankfully Assif is still with us as little English is spoken and finally another soldier is conjured up – surely not hard when there are 10 million of them to hand.
So we say our heartfelt thanks to Assif, and head 210km through the ever more stunning Pamirs to the Khnujerab Pass: at nearly 4,700 metres, the highest road border crossing in the world. Finally we reach the Chinese exit point and leave without further delays. As we cross through the barbed wire to Pakistan, the change is immediate: friendly and relaxed border guards happily wave us through, even encouraging us to take photos; road workers stop, wave and smile; once again, we have entered a very different world.