Passing Time in Kashgar

I spent considerably more time in Kashgar than I had either anticipated or wanted to spend. A slew of cyclists were in town, many of whom had ridden from Europe to western China via Turkey, Iran, and Pakistan. Days went by, with nothing more on the agenda than to wander from food stall to food stall, wander around the old city, and toy with the idea of fixing my bicycle - only to put it off. Martin and I stayed first at the Overseas Chinese Hotel, welcomed back with big smiles by the floor attendant, whom I had grown fond of during our previous stay here, and was now jocular and entitled. Not only would she walk me to our room on the sixth floor (the penthouse, so to speak), but she would invite herself in, sit on a chair or lean against the wall and just watch me pour a glass of tea, shuffle around, make idle conversation. Waiguoren and our habits might have been strange to her, or perhaps she couldn't fathom what we were doing with all that stuff, two bicycles, tents, boots, ice axes, and all the other accoutrements that are part of climbing. Cute and sassy, I liked her immensely, and it was with some reluctance that I moved to the Seman Hotel, across the way, into the same room that Janne was currently occupying, and where every other cyclist we met seemed to be lodging.

We had a birthday dinner for Janne, and a goodbye dinner for Martin, with attendance up over 10 persons. After he left, I said to Eveline - a Dutch cycliste and sometime researcher for the CDC in Africa - that it was strange to have him gone. Martin had been with me more or less constantly for two months: his sighs, our debates about the merits and shortcomings of market capitalism and the strains found in the US, in Denmark, and in the People's Republic of China, the jokes, discussions of the Danish Folkspartei or the euro zone or the disaster that was (and is) US foreign policy, were now behind me. We had argued vigorously on many points, and agreed on more, and now I had to find someone else for the other half of the conversation.

Luckily, this was no problem since Janne and I went back a good long way, and I was in good company in Kashgar...and of course, one should expect and like some time alone, out on the road. Several comings and goings were celebrated, cyclists from various parts of Europe (never another person from the US, but Americans tend to be less adventurous, or perhaps more career oriented), all with interesting stories to tell. I ate more than my fair share of laghman, liang fer, mantou, su jiaozi, naan, ghdze, figs, and so on, putting back on my frame most of what had been lost in the previous two months of cycling and climbing.

The Sunday Market, famed draw for Kashgar came one of the weekends, and though I wasn't particularly moved to see it (lethargy had set in after several days in Kashgar), I grabbed a cab with Martin and Patrick and set off for the northern side of the city and the area where the market has been meeting for centuries.

In 1999, the market was outside, animals were ridden, unloaded, inspected, bought and sold. Young boys rode camels and horses around in front of prospective buyers, men in doppi pulled at beards, haggled, walked away, came back, and settled on a price. Dust hung over the market like a cloud. Musicians drummed, sung, played strings and woodwinds. Noodles were stretched, slapped, pulled, boiled, served, and consumed. Flies and bees swarmed hanging carcasses, honey, fruit, and animal dung.

In 2007, the market was inside, cool, sedate, overrun with tourists who were bored and desperately wanting to find something "authentic". Sure there were still several tens of thousands of participants, there were still folks coming into town on horse and donkey cart, still hawking figs or melons or baked squash by the slice, but it wasn't what it was. Sellers in stalls barked me down, wanting to sell me knives and trinkets for several multiples of the going rate. At one point I decided I should have a knife, since I had lost my knife on the descent from Muztagh Ata. I asked an old man in Chinese how much a knife might go for: "About 15 yuan," he replied. I approached a seller, a young guy with a half formed mustache. "This knife here, how much do you want for it?"

"Two hundred fifty."

"I'll give you fifteen."

"Sold."

Just like that. No bargaining beyond me initial encounter. A relief, but a bit disappointing at the same time. Other tourists just coughed up the 250 gladly (I had seen it a moment before), so I guess he couldn't be bothered to try to bring me up (which I wouldn't have done anyway). He was already far ahead.

Even worse was the Old City: Zhong Kun Company had been given this concession, with some promise of building some tourist infrastructure in the form of hotels and other packaged sightseeing, primarily aimed at the domestic market. Instead, they had simply put up a sign at several alleys leading into a section of around ten percent of the old city (the northwestern corner) entitled "Kashgar Old City" and exacted a tariff of 30 yuan to the tourists who were willing to part with this. I asked a few people if the money went towards anything bounded by this fee zone, and they said uniformly "No". The place was cleaner than it had been a decade earlier, but not particularly lively. Animals no longer jostled through the alleyways; rather it was the occasional putter of a motor scooter. Children's faces pulled away from televisions long enough to look at me and smile, but only just. The square facing Id Kah Mosque was desolate and depopulated, a couple of hacks taking photos of people next to dolled up camels, under the glow of a large LCD monitor broadcasting advertisements to the inattentive few people on their way to the plane trees next to the mosque.

In total, I stayed in Kashgar 11 days, far longer than the four or five that I had initially planned on. Janne was busy sorting out an article and photos he had taken for the summer's first adventure - a walk deep into the eastern Changtang to climb Kong Oskars Fjell (Kang Zhagri), a bit of a coup for him since some famous Swedish adventurer had failed just prior to his successful attempt. Others were even more sluggish than I: Thorsten from Germany languished in Kashgar for what was to be more than two weeks. "When are you leaving?" "Tomorrow." [laughter] And Janne had arrived several days before Martin and I. It is easy enough to lose oneself in the easy comforts of a provincial Chinese town, far to the west (and by extension, cheap), surrounded by a group of people who know how to make bread (that would be Uighurs), and cyclists trooping in and out daily. Each morning the woman in a blue skirt would flash past my half open eyes to see who had left the room: perhaps I would look up from her small cheap black work shoes and she would give a vague directionless smile from underneath her doppi..."Do you have any laundry???"

One night, I went out with a guy named Steve from the UK, who had ridden camels and horses from Delhi or Rajasthan or some such place in the north of India. Ostensibly, we were to discuss his experiences in the Tajik areas south of Kashgar between the KKH and the main road into Tibet from Kargilik. I thought we would grab some coffee at one of the new bohemian cafes that had popped up in the city (yes, organic sumatran coffee is available in Kashgar...). When the first turned out to be closed, Steve suggested a bar for a beer or two. "Have you ever been to a Uighur bar?" I hadn't, and I was intrigued. I had a vision of something similar to the cantinas in my neighborhood in San Francisco: all-male domains with pool tables, hard lighting, loud music on a juke box, patrons knocking back cheap beer after cheap beer. He couldn't remember where we needed to go. We hailed a cab, and asked for a Uighur bar (Steve spoke Uighur, having lived at the Seman Hotel for nearly a year the year before and studying the local language). The first cabbie had no idea. We just got out near the Id Kah Mosque (perfect location for a bar) and walked around for a bit. I figured we would just end up at a chaykhana, but Steve was persistent. A group of Pakistanis in shalwar kameez approached us on the sidewalk. "If anyone knows where to get booze in this town, its the Pakistanis." These were the guys shouldering prayer rugs on Friday at noon, wearing turbans, lecturing me about Islam - obviously he was right. And they did know: "You want the Cowboy Bar? Of course - it's behind the bus station."

We caught another cab, walked in and paid the 5 yuan cover, and headed up the stairs. The place exceeded all expectations: what greeted me was a room smelling of cologne, perfume, body odor, beer, and cigarettes. The folks running the place were wearing cowboy hats and jeans, and the motif was definitely American west, complete with hitching posts and wagon wheels. A huge dance floor was covered with young Uighurs - perhaps some two hundred - and tables surrounding it (behind the wooden corral fence) were populated with couples talking over beer and whiskey.

Steve and I talked for a while about travel, how it is to manage a horse or a camel, run-ins with the Chinese authorities. Really we yelled at each other, because the disco music was loud, like it should be. The dj served up an eclectic mix, from house and electronica to Uighur pop to the occasional Punjabi song or a Chinese hip-hop number. Rather than beat match and run songs together, he would stop after a song finished, everyone would retire to a table or stand along the side - the dance floor would clear completely - and then two minutes later he would start up another song, and within ten seconds, the crowd had poured back in and had begun dancing. The sea of people moved slowly counterclockwise, generally keeping to the shoulder shakes and steps of traditional Central Asian dancing, not much mixing of the sexes, but everyone there to dance nevertheless, men with men, women with women. We couldn't resist getting up there - I in my flip flops - and soon we were moving around in a circle with the rest of the group, I probably anyone's senior by ten years at 33. Smoke hung in the air, and a green laser light show played on the ceiling, while the DJ would just howl maniacally into his microphone. Horrible, yes, but exhilarating. At 1:30am, the music we had been dancing to suddenly stopped, and the DJ queued up hard techno. Strobe lights kicked in, and everyone started to thrash and convulse. There were break-dancing circles, head stands, spins, bumping and grinding - basically all of the things that I presumed the older generation of Uighurs would be horrified to witness. I loved it. At one point a few Pakistanis found me, pulled me in close, and yelled into my ear, "Are you Muslim? Are you Muslim?"

I broke a smile, "Absolutely...Are you?"

"Yeah!!!" He hugged and kissed me, delighted to be in familiar company, I suppose.

I passed another hour and a half here at the Cowboy Bar, dancing with the Pakistanis, watching young men and women go out of their heads on alcohol and music, before the club wound up and it was time to go home. Steve was hungry at 4am, so we went back to the hotel via a kebab stand, served by a kid who could hardly keep his eyes open or his mouth closed, slackjawed and exhausted from a sixteen hour workday. I spent considerably more time in Kashgar than I had either anticipated or wanted to spend. A slew of cyclists were in town, many of whom had ridden from Europe to western China via Turkey, Iran, and Pakistan. Days went by, with nothing more on the agenda than to wander from food stall to food stall, wander around the old city, and toy with the idea of fixing my bicycle - only to put it off. Martin and I stayed first at the Overseas Chinese Hotel, welcomed back with big smiles by the floor attendant, whom I had grown fond of during our previous stay here, and was now jocular and entitled.