Thus began about 36 hours of hellacious bus travel: 6 hours to Korla, overnight 22 hours 500 km on the Cross-Desert Highway to Hotan, and then a final 10 to Kashgar.

I had hoped for a day bus across the desert, but there were only two night ones (possibly a day bus coming the other way). I took it anyway and can say its been crossed, whatever that does. The scenery was predictably flat, barren, and gray.

The road bounced the bus every second of the journey quite roughly and a tepid headache turned into migraine status. I thought Minerva was going to spring from my head fully armored by the last leg, but finally Kashgar appeared.

Kashgar has been a hive of commerce for over 2,000 years and is the western most tip of the Chinese Empire, as the large statue of Chairman Mao in city center reminds you.

Kashgar is the heartland of Uighur culture filled with white beards, kebabs, and peculiar hats. The highlight was the Sunday Market and Livestock Market held on the same day.

The Livestock Market boasts an animal to people ratio virtually equal. Sellers and buys come to barter over sheep, horses, donkeys, and camels.

Livestock Market

The Sunday Market proved even more packed with stalls of silks, carpets, fruits, clothing, everyday items, and knives. The area is famed for its handmade knife production and I picked up the one in the middle:

From China by ferry, I’ll swoop south into the picturesque mountainous provinces. Skirting Tibet, I’ll have the first big choice.

My plan was to go to Tibet, but issues with my visa and the closure and subsequent tight reopening make that financially unwise. From Xi’an I’ll either head into Mongolia or along the silk road to Pakistan. In Mongolia I’d spend near 2 months and have a job as an assistant on a horse trekking company. Hard to pass up, expect that leaves me with major visa problems. I’ll probably have to send my passport back to the US to get another China visa for the Silk Road, or for a Russian visa and take the Trans-Siberian to Moscow (original plans).

From Pakistan I would swoop into India, possibly returning to Nepal. India is a place where a lot of time could be spent. In any case, I’ll fly to Egypt and then onto Morocco before returning to the US… where I’ve got to find a job!

My plan is to update here a rather stream of consciousness style narrative. There wont be any pictures but an journey’s end I will go back and add them and clean up the posts (bare with the typos).

ja ne