Treading the Silk Road
Contributors: Lydia Wraw, Rose Wallop and Carys Wright
A nine hour flight took us to Beijing and the humid cloud of smog that was to cause some consternation to budding Olympian champions. There was no such problem, though, at the base of the Great Wall of China. It seemed surreal to be walking on such a famous landmark, surrounded by such beauty in a world so unlike our own.
Determined to get the most out of the day, Erin, our guide, took us to see the Flying Acrobats who treated us to a show of the seemingly impossible. One man flicked bowls onto his head whilst balancing on a moving plank held up by another man who was also perched on a moving plank. Contortionists made us squirm by forcing their bodies into inhuman shapes and about ten or more women balanced on a single bicycle riding round the stage.
Finally, at nearly eleven that evening, and after a twenty-four hour day, we arrived at our hotel to be told we were to have a seven o clock wake up call so that Erin could show us Tiananmen Square and the Forbidden City.
Strangely, standing in the Square, we seemed to become objects of much curiosity to the locals who stared at us as if quite unfamiliar with foreigners. Inside the Forbidden City, the curiosity became even more marked, with people taking pictures of us and especially of the fair-skinned girls. Our own attentions were drawn to this vast, ancient, home of the Emperors whose ornate decorations overwhelmed the senses and merged into one through countless courtyards.
It was then time to say goodbye to Erin as we headed for Urumqi and our first internal, Chinese flight.
Iconic Kashgar became one of the most surreal experiences of the trip. Here, we stayed at the Chini Bagh, former British Consulate during the years of the Great Game of intrigue and espionage between the British and Russians. In Kashgar the traditional rhythms of the traders, worshippers and bakers seem unchanged amidst the mud-brick walls, carts and bazaar.
After a voyeuristic stroll round the old town, our authentic experience was completed by a dinner accompanied by traditional Uighur and Tajik dancing. Invited on stage to join the dancers, some of us broke through our initial self-consciousness and amazing things were revealed, most notably Father Dickie’s somewhat possessed impression of a Uighur Ian Curtis.
The Kashgar livestock market is an essential fixture in a Kashgari’s week and completely undesigned for tourists. Here, we were confronted by rows of carcases swinging on hooks around the perimeter; men herded sheep and donkeys in a thousand directions. Careful discernment began to reveal an order to the apparent chaos and we could pick out individual details such as the livestock rafts on which sheep were tied together by their necks in pairs. Overwhelmed by the heat and smell, we had the choice of purchasing meat dumplings or chilled milk and animal fat soup.
Overnight expeditions took us to two of China’s most sacred and spectacular lakes. We stayed in a Kazakh yurt (a circular tent) at Tianchi and in a Kirghiz yurt at Karakul Lake in the Pamirs.
The bus trip to Lake Karakul took us along the Karakorum Highway, an ancient part of the Silk Route carved deep into pink mountains and in need of constant preservation. This was the world’s greatest east-west trade route and vehicle for cross cultural exchange, first travelled by Xhang Qian in the Second Century BC during the Han Dynasty. Here, were the timeless and romantic oases of Dunhuang, Turpan, Kuqa and Aksu on the northern edge of the Taklamakan desert. None of the pictures we took could do justice to the majesty of our surroundings.
Scorched ground seeped sun into the soles of our shoes; necks bent to admire towering minarets; eyes squinted at ochre against a clear blue sky. We had been warned about the heat of Turpan many times, but it was only on arrival that we could truly appreciate how the Flaming Mountains got their name. Under a vine-covered awning, we enjoyed a meal with the welcoming Uighur people. Here was a village that undid any earlier, ignorant expectations of China and, here, we cycled in the cool of the day amidst orchards and vineyards that thrived under the ancient Karez irrigation system, started in Persia 2500 years ago.
We discovered sand sports and camel rides on Marco Polo’s ‘Roaring Dunes’. These rise 250 metres above Dunhuang and provide China’s classic picture book desert scenery.
We explored some of the world’s greatest cave art in the Dunhuang Magao caves. The Kizil Thousand Buddha Caves stretched our imaginations and preconceptions: used by Buddhists in the past for meditation, they varied in age, size and intricacy; one cave included a Buddha statue standing fifty feet high.
|