Day 431 - Milling around Old Kashgar

Our train pulled into Kashgar and we immediately set about buying return tickets for in a few days time - we didn't want to have to leave so soon but we have to get back to buy our train tickets to Kazakhstan. Plus we didn't want to have to have another luxury trip in first class, that we can't really afford by leaving the ticket-buying to the last minute.

Kashgar was a major centre for silk rood trading for thousands of years, as it was a strategic point between many Central Asian countries. Here the population is overwhelmingly Uighur, and our Chinese language skills are virtually useless - good practice for us, as we'll be spending the next few months in Central Asia with no language abilities at all!

Finding accommodation here was a complete mission - thanks to the ever so un-Western friendly Chinese government. The first 5 hotels we went to turned us away merely because we're foreigners and pointed us in the direction of a hotel double our price range! After an infuriating 2 hours wandering the streets, we gave in and had a delicious Uighur lunch!

Revived we finally stumbled upon a pearler of a hotel just within our budget - by far the fanciest hotel we've ever stayed at in Asia, it even has an elevator! It does happen to be just down the road from where the bomb attack took place just over a week ago ...

We spent the rest of the afternoon ambling around the back roads of the old town - though we passed on paying to enter enter the renovated "Old Town". We're not sure why you would pay when there's so much to see outside of the Chinese Tourist Trap. We got a true Uighur experience making our way between stalls of breads, fruit, knives, brass ware and more.

We watched the craftsmen making their goods by hand, just as their father and grandfathers would have done over the years. We have been searching for cotton sleeping bag liners for our travels through Central Asia and India as we've heard they can be pretty dirty places to sleep, but it's too hot for sleeping bags. The cheapest we could find was about $20 each, which is crazy for a square piece of material - so when we found ourselves in the middle of the material part of town we bought some cotton and found a dress-making shop to sew us up some bags! $5 later we had 2 perfect liners and had spent an enjoyable half hour watching beautiful Uighur women happily sewing together stunning traditional clothing.Oh, and we also got the fright of our lives when the mother's young daughter ran away with our bag and Adam's sunnies on her face. She promptly returned them for hundreds of photos while the rest of her family worked.
After exhausting ourselves with sights, sounds, smells, and smiles we made our way back to our hotel via more backroads, tended to the necessities of food, then enjoyed watching some Olympics on tv. However we are getting sick of hearing shouts of "piaoliang" (beautiful) and it would be nice to see some other countries competing.

Adlibing it with the Uighurs.