We caught a soft-sleeper train from Kashgar to Urumqi, a full day of travelling, as we had a room to ourselves the time went by fairly quickly.
Urumqi is a large gateway city connecting Central Asia to China, we didn’t spend too much time in the city, but did enjoy the People’s Park with leafy surrounds, pond and the pavilion in traditional Chinese architecture was a nice change from the Islamic architecture we were now used to.
The highlight was a day trip to Tian Chi (Heavenly Lake).
It was Travis who was very keen on visiting Kashgar. When faced with our dilemma leaving Kyrgyzstan, I suggested travelling straight to Urumqi and perhaps giving the inconveniently located Kashgar a miss (I’d heard the city was no longer quite the Silk Road trading hub it used to be due to massive Chinese development). That would have been a mistake, and I’m glad my stubborn significant other insisted, one of the reasons being the livestock market (the others being the most enjoyable Uighur street food and fascinating night market).
Any traveller wishing to visit Kashgar should make sure their trip runs over a Sunday, as it is early morning on this day each week the local Kashgari men bundle their most valued livestock and display it for sale. The massive market, located about ten minutes from town comprises of sections for cows, sheep, goats (including a particularly favourite billy goat area), donkeys and horses. There were animals everywhere. I tried to avoid thinking about their fate. It was smelly, dirty and overwhelming, yet wonderfully intriguing to watch the interactions – a local Uighur man inspecting a potential purchase by squeezing the udders of a goat and finally, when the sale was made – the respectful handshakes between buyer and seller.
One of the nice changes was the change in cuisine, Kashgar has a large number of Uyghurn people which influences the cuisine. Uyghurs are an ethnic minority group with the majority living in the south-western part of China. During our stay in Kashgar we ate Uyghurn food at traditional restaurant Intizar of Shou La Mian (noodles topped with meat and vegetables) and tohu gangpan (spicy chicken, potatoes and rice). To drink was green tea with a hint of nutmeg. As we walked down the street we found Tangaza (sticky rice wrapped in banana leaves and served with syrup) for a mere one Yuan each.
At the large Sunday market (which sold everything from Uyghur hats and knives to all the usual Chinese goods) we also found street food – plates of noodles for three Yuan, chuchura (steamed dumplings) and samsas (samousas) for two Yuan each, watermelon slices for one to two Yuan depending on size, and our favourite, freshly fried fish served with seasoning for five Yuan.
That night we headed to Kashgar’s night market for dinner, featuring street food of Uyghur cuisine, there was more than one dish being sold that made us a little queasy. This included stuffed intestines, trotters and tripe. We started with some tame chickpeas and capsicum and then a plate of noodles with a vinegar sauce. We then went for some cheap one Yuan skewers which we thought were chicken. However, after eating them we think they may have been goat’s bottom, which explained the ridiculously cheap price. After passing the halved goats heads a number of times, I decided to try one for eight Yuan. The cook observed me trying to work out what to do with this goats head on my plate, and kindly helped me crack the skull and remove the “good bits”. It was mostly all tendons with a bit of meat, I couldn’t bring myself to eat the lips which still had the jagged texture.
We finished the night with Uighur dessert named durap (yogurt, shaved ice and lemon juice all sloshed together), quite tasty.
Kashgar (or Kashi as we learnt when booking the airline tickets) is an important Silk Road city as it was the first major hub after travellers from China heading west had passed the hazardous Taklamakan Desert. Kashgar contains a mix of cultures, predominantly the Islamic Central Asian Uyghur people and more recently with new development in the Western China region, Han Chinese. Kashgar boasts one of the largest and liveliest livestock markets in the world.
We visited Id Kah Mosque, the largest mosque in China, a yellow exterior facade, the design was distinctly different to the mosques we had only recently seen in Iran and Central Asia. From the mosque we visited the Afaq Khoja Mausoleum, the holiest Muslim site in Xinjiang. The mausoleum featured colourful mosaics on the minarets and dome.
One of the interesting things was the time zone, in Kyrgyzstan the sun was setting around 8pm local time. Now even though Kashgar is a few hundred kilometres from Kyrgyzstan, all of China uses Beijing time, which is a further two hours ahead. This meant that the sun would be setting around 10pm, not something that we were used to.
The highlight though was the Uighur food.
