Leaving Kashgar
We tried to be the Darlingtons. We went to the national tourist office to arrange for a car but, in typical Chinese bureaucrat style, the clerk shrugged his shoulders and had nothing to offer. We had only one choice: the bus. Bus tickets had to be bought in advance, but only one day in advance, and only at the Qinibak Hotel, and only before 1 PM. We didn't worry. Kashgar was beautiful and, by our Central Asian standards of hardship, easy. On Monday morning we had our usual late breakfast outdoors at John's Information Café, a sixties sort of a place where aimless European kids with backpacks picked up second-hand guidebooks and shared cheap meals with a friendly tribe of honeybees. We were acculturated enough to rent bicycles for the short excursion over to the Qinibak for our tickets and then for a day of touring the sights outside the central market. But we made a tactical error. China has two currencies: local renmen-bi ("People's money") and foreign exchange currency (FEC or yuan). We wanted to spend down our less useful renmen-bi so we left our FEC as the deposit on the bikes and headed for the Qinibak with the People's money. The quaint angled lanes of Kashgar weren't nearly so sweet when we had a precise destination in mind and we got lost. Arriving at the Qinibak at 12:45, we offered our money at the ticket window and heard, "No renmen-bi! FEC only!" What choice did we have but to hop back on the bikes and hightail it back to the rental place, switch money and speed back to the Qinibak. When I think of that manic bike ride, the music from the Wizard of Oz always comes to mind — you know, from the scene near the beginning when the wicked neighbor lady is riding her bike trying to outrun the tornado. We didn't have a second to spare. Jim was taking the lead because his legs were stronger. He had the money. His hat flew off; I retrieved it. On the way back to the Qinibak I suddenly gaped in horror when he made a wrong turn. I raced after him screaming at the top of my lungs, tears of anger and frustration springing to my eyes. It must have looked like one of those Stop! Thief! scenes to the locals who I nearly ran over. On his own, Jim realized he'd fucked up and turned around. As he passed me in a cloud of dust, the dust got under one of my contacts and I proceeded after him half blind and already succumbing to the post-adrenaline shakes. But he got the tickets. The next leg of our journey arranged, we
celebrated with Chinese beer and set off to explore the outskirts of town. In the lanes,
we threaded our way among the horse- and donkey-carts. On the broad avenues, bikes had
their own protected lanes, one in each direction. We rode out to East Lake and found the tomb of Sayyid Ali Asia Khan (very important guy). This was the only place we had an unpleasant experience with the Uighurs. A band of small boys chased us around, grabbed Jim's hat, and tried to jump on the back of our bikes. We sped off and made it to the Abakh Hoja tomb, a tiny Taj Mahal in disrepair. We were following the guidebook under Places to See, but monuments are not what Kashgar is about. We enjoyed the tranquility of the site however. We sat outside one of the shops and drank icy cold orange Fantas and were treated to free slices of watermelon, the ubiquitous oasis fruit. A swarm of honeybees joined us to share the sweets. The shopkeepers thought my alarm was funny. They live in perfect harmony with the bees. Honey is a staple. Honey churned with ice, with or without yogurt is served everywhere. The big social gathering place in this Islamic culture is not a bar, but an open tent where they serve honey drinks and have a big television blaring low-budget regional melodramas. They go day and night. One last incident in our hotel. About midnight, maids barge into our room. We are undressed and jump under the covers. They are followed by a Japanese man with a long pole. He was drying his clothes on some structure outside his window and they fell off. They open our window, fiddle with the pole, retrieve the clothes and are gone as fast as they came. |
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Where were the Darlingtons when we needed them? It was
time to plan our trip back into Pakistan and we were on our own. No angel sweeping in with
a solution, no planful English couple with a Land Cruiser, not even a con man full of
promises. Just Butch & Sundance, Hope & Crosby, Jim & Susan facing the
road ahead.