PAUL ANDERSON
an aussie abroad
Welcome!
Over the past two decades I’ve lived all around the globe, seizing every opportunity to travel and explore the outdoors. I’ve experienced some great adventures along the way and I’ve met some amazing people. It’s been an incredible journey, but I’m not planning to slow down anytime soon! Enjoy the site, and stay connected. – Paul
With a long day of driving along the Karakoram Highway (KKH) ahead we had an early start after breakfast. The initial drive south out of Kashgar is surprisingly mundane, but we stopped off in the town of Upal after an hour or so to stretch our legs and check out the local bazaar (a bit more authentic than the Kashgar one).
After another hour or so we started climbing up the Ghez Valley, following the alluvial river bed past grazing camels and heading towards giant snow-capped mountains in the distance. Our progress was slowed by around 60km of horrendous mega-scale construction to improve the road considerably and develop an epic hydroelectric scheme to dam the waters from multiple valleys and channel it through the mountains down into a couple of generating stations.
One of the casualties of the hydro scheme is the lake around Sand Mountain. When I was here in 2006 the mountain (which is draped in sand dunes, hence the name) had a large shallow river basin at its base with ribbons of water meandering across it – very scenic. Now, with the lake dammed up, it’s a (still beautiful) turquoise lake instead.
Sand Mountain marked the end of the construction, and with that behind us we made good time past some of the Kyrgyz villages to Karakul Lake @ 3700m for a late lunch. This was as far as I made it down the KKH in 2006, and the vista was just as stunning as I remember with Muztagh Ata (7546m, the “Father of Ice Mountains”) and Kongur (7719m) providing an incredible backdrop with great glaciers streaming down towards the lake.
While it had been raining in Kashgar that morning (a very rare occurrence), the weather had cleared throughout the day and as we continued our onward journey south conditions continued to clear. With Muztagh Ata looming high above us on the left hand side, we crested the pass at almost 4000m and started descending down the other side. The terrain was much drier and very barren, and we had moved from an ethnic Kyrgyz region to an ethnic Tajik one – at one point we were just 10km and one Pamir mountain range away from Tajikistan.
Our descent was gradual, and after another hour or so down a wide valley we reached our destination for the night: Tashkurgan. This town, the last one before we reach the border with Pakistan, has been strategically important for a couple of millennia as it sits at the junction of the Karakoram, Pamir and Hindu Kush mountains. Unfortunately, even with all that history, the town has very little to show for it today and I checked out all that is left in the ruins of the ancient double-walled mud brick fortress on the hill above the valley plains.
Having met the rest of the tour group in the hotel lobby over breakfast, we set out to sightsee around Kashgar for the day. I was curious to see what had changed since I was last here in 2006 on my epic Silk Road trip across the region. I was expecting the worst, as even back then relentless “progress” and modernization was destroying large swathes of the old town and taking away from the character of the place – making it just another dull, ubiquitous Chinese city rather than the crossroads of Central Asia.
The first surprise was a pleasant one, as I was expecting from reports that I’d see a lot less Uighur and a lot more Han Chinese – a la Tibet these days, another mislabeled “autonomous region”. I was pleased to see a lot of Uighur men and women throughout the city with their colored headscarves, boxy sequined hats (for the men) and jovial, smiley demeanor.
Highlight for the day was, as it was back in 2006, the livestock market – although it has since been moved to another location well out of town. Dusty, noisy and vibrant, it’s a photographers dream. Farmers and peasants come from all around in all sorts of vehicles with whatever animals they have to sell – goats, sheep, cows, yaks, horses and camels (the ungainly ones with two humps). They groom the animals, tie them together in neat rows and then haggle over prices with prospective buyers. Great fun to spectate!
Other sights/highlights for the day include the bazaar (now unfortunately stocked with more crap from the east of China than treasures from Central Asia) and a brief walk through what’s left of the old town with its mud brick buildings, city walls and narrow lanes. We ate like emperors through the day as well, lunch was Peking Duck (a long way from Peking!) and dinner was a veritable feast at a Uighur’s home complete with traditional music which showed its Turkish roots.
While it was fun to explore Kashgar again, it felt like a strange way to start the trip. The real adventure begins tomorrow when we head south down to Karakoram Highway into the mountains, and that’s what we’re really here for!
I went to SFO ready to take on the challenge of getting to Kashgar via Shanghai (including an airport change across the city in the 4-hour layover), Beijing (an overnighter) and Urumqi (brief layover) before touching down in KSH some day and a half after I started. Unfortunately these best laid plans were put to rest from the outset as the outbound United flight was at least 4 hours delayed, meaning I wouldn’t make my onward connections.
After some nightmarish haggling with United and Air China I finally managed to wangle myself onto the direct SFO-Beijing flight, and slept most of the way on what seemed an endless flight over Alaska and the remote north-east of Russia.
Emerging from Beijing airport’s incredible Terminal 3 it felt otherworldly with thick smoggy haze, muggy temperatures, a weak orange evening sun and a cream-colored moon in the sky. I now had time to burn in Beijing overnight and treated myself to a surprisingly decent $20 hotel room near the terminal. The room was clean and functional, and somehow a lifetime of Chinese cigarettes had given it a pleasant odor of Argentinian maté. After a bargain $5 dinner and a beer around the corner – in which I perhaps unwisely went for the spiciest thing on the menu after a day of bland airline food – I went to bed knowing I’d be up in a few hours to head back to the terminal.
At 5am I was already back at the terminal to check in for my flights. At security I was ushered in to a separate queue for additional screening as I was heading to the Wild West badlands of the country (there has been some violence recently in Xinjiang between the indigenous Uighur Muslims and the Han Chinese).
The flight to Urumqi was uneventful, although I sat glued to the window as we flew over the empty, sandy expanse of the Gobi Desert, which then contrasted with some fabulous views of one of the snow-capped and forested ranges of the Tian Shan mountains at eye level on approach to the airport (see photo below).
After a quick transfer I hopped on to the final flight of my trip, this time choosing to sit on the right side of the plane to nab some views of the Tian Shan mountains as we took off and climbed to crushing altitude. On the run from Urumqi down to Kashgar, the flights parallel the mountain range that separates China from Kyrgyzstan, and it was quite the contrast setting snowy peaks out one window and the Taklamakan Desert on the other side.
As we approached to land, Kashgar emerged as a green oasis in the desert: the city taps into the great rivers of glacial runoff that emerge from the towering mountains to the south (Karakoram) and west (Pamir). In Kashgar I met with two of the clients and the other trip leader Vassi who is to be my mentor for this tour (check out his site: www.arclight-pictures.com), and together we rendezvoused with the local Wild China (GeoEx’s local operator in the country) representatives Tahir and Gloria who took us to our hotel in town. Driving through the pleasant, sunny streets lined with poplar trees and mulberry trees took me back to my Silk Road travels through the region back in 2006 – it feels good to be back!
Following our check-in at the romantically named Tarim Petroleum Barony Hotel, we met a few more of the clients and went for a quick dinner around the corner at a Uighur restaurant – back to kebabs and rice. After that I collapsed into bed exhausted after almost two days of travel. Need to get my rest – the tour starts tomorrow!
