Sleeper Bus

There are several flights a day from Kashgar to the provincial capitol of Urumqi in the North. The flight is about 1 hour long and costs about $100. Looking back, it all seems so reasonable.

But, at the time, I had just finished reading two interesting books about crazy Westerners traveling around China by road (China Road by Rob Gifford and Country Driving by Peter Hessler). And after meeting all the other travelers in Kashgar, I was really gung ho about "traveling the Silk Road by land", whatever that means.

The first leg of my Silk Road journey would be a 26 hour bus ride to Urumqi.

I guess one week in Kashgar was long enough to make me forget how much I hated being cramped up in that stupid Land Cruiser.

In China, long distance bus routes are often serviced by "sleeper buses". Instead of seats, the buses are equipped with three rows of bunk beds. Each passenger is given a bunk to lay on for the duration of the trip.


I boarded in the afternoon and would be arriving in Urumqi the following afternoon. The other passengers were mostly Uygurs with a few Han Chinese mixed in. I was the only foreigner.


Part of the allure of bus travel in China, is that you are traveling among the common working class people, as opposed to an airplane full of Chinese yuppies. You get to see things you don't normally see back home... A big Chinese guy taking his shirt off and making himself comfortable in the bunk one over from you... Another Chinese guy asking to swap bunks with you for a bit, so he could smoke a cigarette by the bus window... Uygur children comfortably napping on the bus floor aisles...

One Uygur woman would periodically kneel up on her bed for her daily prayers.


We drove for many hours. Traveling along the northern edge of the Taklamakan Desert, one of the most inhospitable regions in the world, we passed through a variety of desert landscapes. Reddish mountains, desert sands, rocky crags...

Towns were few and far between, the only other vehicles on the road were trucks transporting goods to and from Kashgar. Every so often, we would stop in the middle of nowhere for a bathroom break or to grab a bite to eat.



Perhaps I was spoiled by the scenery in Tibet, but the scenery grew old after a few hours. I tried to pass the time by reading books on my Ipad and taking naps. The bed was comfortable enough and I got a full night's sleep. But even after 8 hours of sleep, there are still eighteen more hours of travel time to account for!

Before I knew it, my Ipad battery was drained and I lay on my bed listlessly staring out the window. At least I wasn't on a camel.

As afternoon approached, we passed oil refineries and vast wind farms. Soon we would be in the western metropolis of Urumqi, a Chinese boom town in the middle of the desert.

Kashgar

Having traveled around China for the past year, over time, the big Chinese cities start to blend together... The drab concrete architecture, the endless strips of convenience stores, diners, and cell phone shops, the sea of Chinese people going about their day-to-day business...

So getting to explore Kashgar for the first time, in all its diversity, was a breath of fresh air.


From the signage written in Arabic script, to the bulbous mosque rooftops, to the street side naan vendors, everything was new to me.

Most interesting were the people.

Xinjiang is home to 13 official ethnic minority groups. Besides the Uygurs, other prominent ethnic groups include the Kazakhs, the Tajiks, the Huis, the Kirgiz, and a bunch of others that I previously never knew existed.

In terms of appearance, they range from standard Han Chinese-looking, to Middle Eastern-looking, to never-seen-anyone-that-looks-like-that-before-looking. And everything in between.


Occasionally there would be an otherwise Chinese-looking person with bright green eyes or a cartoonishly husky beard. Or a Caucasian-looking person with red hair and rosy cheeks, but slightly Chinese-looking eyes.

People who, in other parts of China you would just assume were tourists, but here in Xinjiang were dressed as locals and conducting their day-to-day business in fluent Chinese. I had read that in Chinese cinema, particularly Caucasoid -featured Uygurs were often cast to play the white people roles, but had never been able to fully conceptualize it... until now.

I actually found it easier to communicate in Mandarin with the Uygurs than I have with actual Han Chinese people from other parts of China. Perhaps because they learn it as a second language and speak a more standard version of it, speaking in a slower more deliberate tone and with less of a local accent.

At the same time, the streets of Kashgar were typically Chinese in many respects, filled with people and bustling with commerce.


As I do in every new Chinese city, I tried all the local street foods I could find... lamb liver kabobs, lamb lung kabobs, lamb samosas, a popular cold noodle and lentil dish, and a variety of yogurt drinks. I tried "Big Plate Chicken" for the first time, a well-known chicken and potato dish local to Xinjiang.

I went to the Sunday Livestock Market, where ranchers from all over the region come to sell their livestock, like a swap meet for goats and cattle. Coming from a country where we get all our meet from a factory, it was an eye-opening experience to see a cute little goat get slaughtered for the first time.


I explored the alleys of "Old Town" Kashgar, currently being preserved and renovated, to be promoted as a tourist attraction.


Similar to Lhasa, there is also a growing Han Chinese part of town. I went to the mall there to replace the hard drive for my laptop, and it may as well have been any other city in China with nary a non-Han Chinese face to be found.

Kashgar was recently designated a "Special Economic Zone" by the Chinese government. Businesses there will be granted certain economic incentives, the hope being that it will expedite economic growth and industrialization. The ultimate vision of Kashgar from the government's point of view, is as a multicultural hub of commerce for all of Central Asia. Newsweek recently published an article about dubbing it "A New Shenzhen".

I imagine, over time, as investment flows into the city, the Han Chinese part of the city will grow and Kashgar will become more and more "Chinese".

I can't say that this is necessarily a bad thing, because as it stands Kashgar and its surrounding regions are among the poorest and least developed in all of China. It would be hypocritical of me to decry the industrialization of Kashgar, while at the same time enjoying the relative luxuries available there like fast internet access, hot showers, and getting my laptop fixed at the snap of a finger.

At the same time, I am glad I got the chance to experience Kashgar rather than some nameless Chinese city.