After a 20 hour train ride from Ürümqi we arrived in Kashgar, a truly ancient place and one of the oldest continually inhabited cities in the world. Located on the far western point of China close to the border with Kyrgyzstan and Pakistan, it has been a major trading hub of the Silk Road for millenia. It is a convergence point of widely varying cultures and empires, and has been under the rule of the Chinese, Turkic, Mongol and Tibetan empires.

In comparison to Ürümqi the population of Kashgar is mostly Muslim Uyghur people and other Central Asian demographics with only a small percentage of Chinese Han residents. As soon as we arrived we noticed how different it was to everywhere else we had been in China. It felt like we had already arrived in a new country in Central Asia. We also noticed a distinct increase in security, with surveillance everywhere and armed military vehicles patrolling the streets. We seemed to be a real novelty here and received a lot of stares. Some people on the street even tried taking sneaky pictures of us on their phones.

There is an “old town” in Kashgar which is supposedly how the city used to be. Sadly it feels like another case of China appropriating another culture and turning it into Disneyland. There are countless stores selling plastic knick-knacks, photography stores with Uyghur outfits, ice cream shops, and fancy cafés. Turns out a lot of this area was actually destroyed and rebuilt, so the majority of the buildings aren't even old!

We had a few things we wanted to do here. Firstly, we had a bunch of packages to collect with our new camping gear. We brought a cheap tent, sleeping bags, a cooker, and some other miscellaneous things from Taobao, a Chinese equivalent to Amazon. 

Secondly, there is a famous animal market in Kashgar on Sundays. This was an amazing experience seeing the local people selling their sheep, cows, goats, and horses. The sheep here have comically large butts and this was a highlight!

Lastly, we wanted to explore the Karakoram highway (the highway which crosses the Kunjerab pass into Pakistan). Unfortunately, we had some issues finding a driver and the timing didn't work out for us. We will have to come back one day and properly see this incredible part of the world along with Pakistan!

Ürümqi is an ancient city with roots stretching back thousands of years as a Silk Road trading hub. However, in recent years it has experienced rapid growth and modernisation due to large incentives and investment from the Chinese Communist Party. Cookie cutter apartment blocks now dominate the skyline and are largely filled with Chinese Han people incentivised to live there. Now it serves as a Chinese stronghold in this remote and isolated part of China once home to the Uyghur people.

Unfortunately there's not much to do here beyond visiting a Silk Road museum and some parks. The latter we did with our friends Tessa and Jannis from the Netherlands while enjoying some cheap beer and fruit. They were on their way to Kazakhstan overland and the border is not far from Ürümqi. This border would be our way back to China after we finished our time in Central Asia. 

We decided to leave a bunch of our belongings at the hostel in Ürümqi so we could travel lighter in Central Asia and make room for some new camping gear. This was our main reason for coming here, and we ended up leaving behind a decent sized box of stuff. Hopefully it will still be there waiting for us in a few months time!

Ürümqi felt quite empty for such a large city and seemed to lack a heart. With only a couple of days here we didn't have much time to explore and spent a lot of time sorting our things and mentally preparing ourselves for a long train ride to Kashgar where we would be ending this incredible leg of travel in China and crossing into Kyrgyzstan!

We finally arrived in the infamous Xinjiang province, home of the Turkic Uyghur people. Turpan has long been the heart of a fertile oasis and an important stop on the Silk Road. For centuries it has seen the rise and fall of religions and empires, with early Buddhism shaping much of the region before Islam became the dominant faith.

Our stay in Turpan turned out to be one of the most memorable of our time in Western China. We found a warm and welcoming hostel run by the kindest owner, who spoke flawless English and made us feel right at home. Just a few doors down was a bustling Uyghur restaurant, serving up the best meat skewers we’d had anywhere in China. At our hostel we befriended a young Chinese traveler from Beijing, who joined us in exploring the historic sites scattered around the desert fringes.

One highlight was a visit to the ancient Buddhist caves, once filled with vivid murals that told the stories of early Central Asian Buddhism. Sadly, much of the artwork has been defaced over the centuries, first by religious iconoclasm, then at the eager hands of foreign archaeologists. At the start of the 20th century, German scholars carried out the famous Turfan expeditions (1902–1914), removing countless artifacts and paintings with the justification that they would otherwise be lost in China’s political upheavals. Ironically, many of those treasures met their end in the chaos of World War II, destroyed in bombings or looted once again.

Dunhuang is a city in the Gansu province of China situated right on the edge of the Gobi Desert. This was our first time in a proper desert, and we were excited to see some camels and sand dunes. Joined by our pack of Silk Road friends we visited some ancient ruins of the Great Wall of China. It was interesting imagining ancient Chinese guards manning these desolate outposts at the edge of a vast desert. They considered anything West from there the edge of the world.

We had to fulfill our need for camels and sand dunes and Dunhuang had just the place for it. Known as Mingsha Mountain and Crescent Moon Spring, this place is beautiful and also truly crazy in the way Chinese tourist spots tend to be. Picture a picturesque oasis nestled between towering sand dunes. Then picture thousands of tourists covering said dunes and an endless line of camels walking a loop through the dunes, sand buggies driving on pre-built tracks and a nighttime desert concert with drone shows and dancing. It was full on, but the majority Chinese crowd was in such good spirits, and they danced and sang their hearts out to the music as the sun set over the sand dunes on the edge of the Gobi desert. 

Jiayuguan was filled with Silk Road history, new friends and a few too many beers! Named after Jiayu Pass, the first frontier fortress at the west end of the Ming dynasty Great Wall. Situated at the narrowest part of the Hexi Corridor (a narrow stretch of traversable desert between mountain ranges) which acted as a natural funnel for merchants and enemies.

Our first evening in Jiayuguan was an emotional roller coaster. We arrived at our hostel late in the afternoon feeling pretty exhausted from a long travel day. We hadn’t seen much of the city, but we had driven through some weird industrial areas on the way to the hostel, and the vibes were a bit off. 

After resting in our room for a while we forced ourselves to go and explore, and found some electric scooters to rent. We hadn’t managed to get them working up until this point, but this night we were successful and we rode our little yellow scooters into town to a night market. At the market we had our first Uygur food experience, and it was a proper feast. We had huge plates of meat skewers, bowls of roasted peanuts, delicious cucumber salad, and lots of beer. It must be a rare occurrence for foreigners to come to a local market, and we were treated like celebrities. We had strange dishes brought for us, beers given to us, and a lot of Baiju (a strong local spirit). It was a fun night, and a great reminder that when we feel weird about a new place, the best thing to do is to go out and explore. 

When we arrived back at our hostel I got into a deep conversation about geopolitics and history with an Australian guy called Tim. It was nice to talk to someone else with a similar culture and sense of humor in such a remote part of the world.

The next day we had a jam-packed day of sightseeing with our new friend Tim and our friend Felix from Zhangye. We ended the day back at the market for a repeat of the night before, this time with our friends joining us. Jiayuguan was a great mix of history, friends, delicious food and some fun nights.