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Sunday 2004-06-13 - Aşgabat, Turkmenistan
Flying camels
Our Aşgabat city tour today starts with a visit to the Sunday market, better known as the Talkoetsjka bazaar, on the outskirts of the city. Here we see a curious phenomenon — flying camels: Camels that have found a new owner are hoisted onto the owner’s truck with a crane parked here specially for the purpose — under loud protest from the scared camels, of course, but causing no obvious harm.
Sunday 2004-06-20 - Osh, Kyrgyzstan
Getting used to camping
Osh, geographically still in the Fergana valley although thanks to Soviet administrators it’s part of Kyrgyzstan now, not Uzbekistan, is not far from the border. We go straight to our ‘hotel’ first: it’s what used to be a sanatorium in Soviet times but turned into tourist lodging - and very basic. There are simple rooms (though with decent beds), with shared bathrooms and washrooms for every couple of rooms. This serves as a good preparation for the next four nights when we’ll be camping in nature, without any facilities at all…
After we’ve checked in, the “truck bus” takes us back into town where we have some time to change money (there are a lot of money changers on the market — as expected at a typical border town) and then roam over the big market which covers a long stretch along the river, at some places on both sides. It’s a nice market, once of the largest in Central Asia in fact, and apart from a few things we buy for dinner (it’s too early for us to eat dinner now), I do a bit of other shopping as well. There’s even time to take some photographs although by six the market is beginning to close down.
Osh is not only a bustling border town but a smuggler’s center as well where a big part of the opium trade passes through. Looking around it’s not only obvious a lot of Uzbeks live here among the Kirghiz — there’s a lot of money around here as well although most people doing business on the market are clearly not part of that economy.
Sunday 2004-06-27 - Kashgar, Xinjiang (China)
No Sunday market
I wake up with a cold, and my foot still hurts after our rather long walk yesterday, so I decide to pass up on the Sunday market today; after all, I’ve been there already, I don’t feel as though I’m really missing something. After dozing a bit longer, I go outside and sit at a table on the terrace at John’s Cafe to catch up with writing my journal, strengthened by a large pot of jasmine tea (free). That may have been a good choice: when the others come back I understand not only were most disappointed at the animal market (as I was two years ago, when it had already been moved to the outside of the city) but the Sunday market is now in a brand-new building — another sign of the breakneck speed at which Kashgar is changing — I can keep my memory of the way it was.
Thursday 2004-07-01 - Turpan, Xinjiang (China)
Hot!
Turpan lies in a basin, the lowest point of which is at 154m below sea level: the second-lowest on earth and sometimes called the “Oven of China” because it’s so hot. So hot, in fact, even I think it’s hot! (It wasn’t this hot last time I was here, but that was at the beginning of October — now it’s summer.) Our hotel, the Turpan hotel, is along the renovated Nian Qing road though, a pleasant avenue completely shaded by grape vines with walking paths on both sides, and the central road accessible only for public transportation. The hotel is OK, nothing special, but doesn’t offer a place to sit outside in the shade — no problem: the local branch of John’s Cafe across the road does. While the kitchen here isn’t as good as that in the Kashgar branch it’s a nice place to gather for a meal or drink — or just sit and write. After a drink in the shade, Carla and I brave the hot sun to find the bazaar, about the only ‘sight’ in Turpan I haven’t seen yet and rumored to be nice.
The rumor is correct. It’s a really very nice bazaar, and since most of it is covered we can stay in the shade to look around and shop a little. There’s a pleasant kind of organized disorder — or is it disorganized order? Trades and goods each have their own corner or street, a whole hall of restaurants, another with just dried fruit and nuts, a street with shoes, and so on, but it isn’t all straight and new either and large enough to get lost in the labyrinth of streets and halls. We see all kinds of foods that are new to us; frequently we are offered a taste if we just look (pickled whole garlic bulbs for instance — I get a clove to taste and it’s very nice) and we end up buying a bag of spicy rice crackers: nice with a cold beer). The people, both buyers and sellers, are a mixture of Uyghurs and Chinese here, all very friendly. I also get myself a nice pair of red-and-black fabric shoes I can use as house shoes — I can use the salesman’s stool to try them on and they cost me only 15 Yuan (1.50 EUR); I don’t even bother to bargain!
Sunday 2004-07-04 - Dunhuang, China
Market instead of Internet
After lunch at John’s I asked one of the guys there for the Internet Service; they don’t have it here, he says (and neither does the hotel, as I already found out) but he gives me directions where I can find several Internet cafes; “slow”, he warns. Slow is no problem - I’m typing locally most of the time anyway. First I go to the hotel lobby where I sit down at a table and write a bit more; then, accompanied by Carla, who just wants to walk around Dunhuang, I follow the directions given.
At the first Internet cafe, soon found, I am studiously ignored completely, so I walk out again. Not much farther on is another place, like the first with a lot of work stations, but here they’re more friendly. The young man (who tells me it costs 2¥ (Yuan) per hour) shows me to a terminal and starts up Internet Explorer for me. That’s fine, but I need Notepad as well, I try to explain. He doesn’t understand what I mean, so I just sit down and poke around for a while; it’s hopeless — this is a completely customized shell under Windows 98 (I do find out that much) but all menus are non-standard, completely in Chinese, and in fact there are several virtual desktops, it seems. Notepad can’t be found; it’s probably never used — can one even type in Chinese in Notepad, I wonder? I have no idea. I don’t see Wordpad either; I’m forced to give up after a few minutes. I raise my hands in defeat. “No problem,” gestures the young man when we leave.
I give up the idea of updating the travel blog from Dunhuang, and decide to walk around town with Carla instead. In a nice pedestrian street with a lot of stalls with souvenirs we shop around a little, take a peek in yet another Internet cafe (I recognize the same customized shell, so I’m out again very quickly) and then find a nice vegetable market where we roam around a while, and I take some pictures.
