Wandering Goat

Travel stuff by Miguel A. Villarreal

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Location: New York, NY

Saturday, July 02, 2005

Kashed

Kashgar, China

So I finally made it to Kashgar which was my ultimate goal. Am writing from the Chini-Bargh hotel, an ugly concrete box next to an old bungalow which incorporates the remnants of the former British Consulate which was also the estate of legendary British Central Asia Hand Lord George MaCartney, who was the chief British spymaster in Central Asia during the Great Game era and effectively the guardian of the Raj's furthest frontier. Sorry for the lectures, but if you guys would get off your asses and read "Tournament of the Shadows" or Peter Hopkirk's "The Great Game", you would know what I was talking about already and I could go on to more frivolous affairs.

Haven't seen much of Kashgar so I'll talk about that later. Let me just stop and lavish praise upon myself for a second - I hauled ass across 3000 miles of China speaking no chinese and took in a ton of territory, mostly overland, in about 11 days. That goddamned bazaar better be worth it.

As for the trip to Urumqi - I made the latest of my "train friends" on the night train from Dunhuang, a Kazakh tour guide named Hader. With all due respect to my han chinese train comrades from previous train journeys, I've got to give the edge to this guy. Drinking beers on the train with a Kazakh crossing the Taklamaklan is the reason why I do this kind of thing, which sounds nuts but trust me you had to be here.

As for Urumqi - the guidebooks make it out to be a hellhole and it has a long and bloody history of warlordism and general industrial nastiness. I actually found it not that bad, although the service at the Urumqi Ramada could have been a bit better, but the city itself was very modern & new, a lot of money had been poured in recently apparently. It's the capital of the Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region - "autonomous", when one translates the chinese political jargon, means the exact opposite, of course. Maybe they should call it the Xinjiang Uighur Oxymoronous Region. Although, in a rare show of restraint, it appeared the Chinese were too afraid to go to the Uighur section of town because I was the only non-Turkic dude there. Likely because they look mean and carry knives. I actually had a nice dinner there and spoke pidgin Chinese/English/Uigur with the waiter in one of the cafes, although he kept making a throat slitting gesture which was mildly disquieting.

I will also note that I saw a pimped out, fully loaded, NBA first round draft pick style Cadillac Escalade rolling down the streets there, which is the only time I've ever seen a Cadillac in Asia. The second time came not more then an hour later, when I saw a mint condition 80's land barge style Cadillac Fleetwood in the Uigur section. How the hell that car got from Detroit Rock City to Central Freaking Asia in the 80's would probably make a hell of a book.

1 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

The Cadillacs may belong to drug lords from Nuevo Laredo who are scouting new territory. The Mexican government is making it difficult for them to conduct business as usual these days.

10:38 AM  

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