uighurs

I got to Dahongliutan in the late afternoon. I figured my best shot was a truck ride back down to the desert, since the bus from Ali would likely be full. I went back into the Uighur restaurant, and asked if I could have laghman.

"Sure..." No one was moving very quickly. It occured to me that perhaps it was Ramadan.

"Has Ramadan started?"

"Yes."

"Ah, well then, hold the laghman - I'll break the fast with you tonight."

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.

We left for Muztagh Ata in a truck I arranged in a lot with a Uighur driver named Turghan. He was timely - much more so than the four of us who were to be taken the 3 hours to Subashi - and Steffan and Janne crawled sleepily into the cab and fell asleep. We were off on a fresh morning, clear skies lending views towards the Pamir Mountains and the massifs of Kongur and Muztagh Ata, which tower more than 7500m above sea level, and nearly 6000m above the desert oasis of Kashgar.

The road out of Rouqiang passed through oasis farmland, peopled by a mix of Hui, Han, and Uighurs. Bicycled traffic, heavy at first, decreased, and I was on my own 10km down the road. The pavement ended soon after, and again it was desert. Work had begun on continuing the sealed road towards the east, but hadn't gotten very far at this point. I came across a solitary Uighur worker, shoveling sand into a trailer bed. It seemed ludicrous to shovel sand to take anywhere in a place with nothing but sand, but there he was, standing alone, doing his job 20km from anywhere.