Saturday, 30 May 2009

Great Whitley to Upton-on-Severn: The South West Odyssey Days 4 to 6

The South West Odyssey was a long distance walk.
Five like-minded people started in 2008 from the Cardingmill Valley in Shropshire and by walking three days a year finished at Start Bay on the South Devon Coast in May 2019.

In the Second Year we Reached the Malvern Hills, Walked along the Ridge then Headed East to the River Severn

28-May-2009

Day 4: Across Farmland towards the North End of the Malverns Hills

Worcestershire

A year later, on another fine and sunny day, we reconvened in the same pub car park in Great Whitley for the second installment in the South West Odyssey. We posed for the obligatory photo looking fresh and eager to go.

Brian, David, Alison, Francis and Mike ready for part two

We set off over the rich Worcestershire farmland, past oast houses....

Oast Houses

....across fields of broad beans...

Brian among the beans

...and asparagus, the pickers riding up and down the rows lying in small carts,....

Asparagus field, Walsgrove Farm

...before embarking on the long, gentle and well-shaded climb up Woodbury Hill...

Up Woodbury Hill

...from where we had our first view of the Malvern Hills, our target for the next day.

The Malverns in the distance

In Shropshire many footpaths were unsigned, unmaintained and, too often, unwalked. The same was not true of Worcestershire, where in some places farmers made it abundantly clear where they wanted us to walk.

The path across Rodge Hill Farm

We moved from arable land into rough pasture and woodland as we descended towards the River Teme. The Teme rises over the Welsh border in Radnorshire and flows for 130 Km through Knighton, Ludlow and Tenbury Wells before joining the Severn a little south of Worcester. Despite its variable water level, the river is clean and healthy enough for salmon to migrate upstream and spawn in its upper reaches. Here, between Tenbury and Worcester, the Teme turns south, running for a short while parallel to our route.

Down to the River Teme

For several kilometres we followed the river, sometimes in the valley and sometimes on the slopes of the flanking hills. We stopped for an early pint of refreshment at The Admiral Rodney in Berrow Green. The pub is named after the commander of the British fleet at the battle of Cape St Vincent - as, apparently, are all the little dipsticks and plonkers subsequently named 'Rodney'(whether they know it or not). Fortified we rounded Berrow Hill.

A Brief Digression: The Battles of Cape St Vincent

A carved memorial near Stone Library (that is the town of Stone in Staffordshire, not a place where you can borrow stones) to local lad Admiral Sir John Jervis, the victor of the Battle of Cape St Vincent, suggests either the battle had two victors or there were more than one battle. In fact nine naval encounters between 1337 and 1833 are known as the Battle of Cape St Vincent. The biggest was in 1797 when Sir John Jervis, with 22 ships, defeated a much large Spanish fleet during the French Revolutionary War. Sir George Rodney defeated an outnumbered Spanish Squadron in the 1780 Battle of Cape St Vincent, apparently an engagement in the American Revolutionary War, though the only participants were Britain and Spain.

Cape St Vincent is generally regarded as the extreme south west corner of both Portugal and Europe, making it a useful reference point for any naval action in a vast area of sea. We have visited the cape several times, and it appears in a 2013 blogpost Algarve: The West Coast.

End of digression.

Around Berrow Hill

By now the Malvern Hills looked much closer....

The Malvern Hills

A little further south the Teme resumes its westward course, so we crossed it at Knightwick, stopping briefly for a late pint of refreshment in the riverside garden of the Talbot Inn.

From here, paths over pastures populated mainly by sheep brought us to the village of Alfrick...

Approaching Alfrick

...and took us on to a bridge on a minor road where Lynne and Hilary were waiting to whisk us to Wyche Keep Country House B & B. The house perches on the side of the Malvern Hills giving our rooms fabulous views across the Severn Valley and the next stage of our route.

29-May-2009

Day 5: Into the Malvern Hills and Over the worcestershire Beacon

Lynne and Hilary returned us to the rather non-descript point where the previous day's walk had ended.

Lynne & Hilary discuss what to do with their day.

We continued our approach to the Malverns. This being Worcestershire it was inevitable that we would pass through orchards....

Worcestershire Orchards

...and hardly surprising when we came across fine old buildings undergoing restoration. Had this building, we wondered, been moved here from another site?

Restoration near Norris Wood

By 11 0'clock we were quite close to the first hill of the Malvern ridge, a smallish tump rather unimaginatively called End Hill.

End Hill

The Malverns are the product of a fold along a line between two terranes. The hard igneous and metamorphic rocks here forced to the surface are pre-Cambrian in origin and, at some 680 million years old, among the oldest in Britain. The rock is non-porous but has many narrow fissures, resulting in a line of springs around the base of the hills. This naturally purified water has been appreciated since the middle ages, when clean water was a rarity. The first record of bottled Malvern Water dates from 1622 and large scale commercial exploitation started in 1850 when Schweppes built what may have been the world's first bottling plant at the Holywell in Malvern Wells. I remember in my teens - and I was a teenager long before the current fashion for bottled waters - the mark of a pretentious pub or club was a bottle of Malvern water standing on the bar for mixing with whisky.

There are 70 sources around the hills. We passed the Beauchamp Fountain as we rounded End Hill.

Malvern Water - The Beauchamp Fountain

Having not bothered with End Hill, we had to climb the next one....

Ascending Table Hill

..which gave us a fine view over Malvern and the haze in the Severn Valley.

Malvern and the Severn Valley from Table Hill

Having toiled up to the 373 m summit we immediately descended to the village of West Malvern for refreshment. It was a warm day, and with the prospect of climbing the Worcestershire Beacon to the Malvern's highest point straight after lunch, real ale man Francis chose to forsake his usual beverage in favour of a doubtful concoction whose advertisers would like you to think of as The Real Thing. I don't think it could have done him any good. Warning: the photograph below is not suitable viewing for beer drinkers of a nervous disposition.

Francis and 'The Real Thing'

Regardless of our chosen refreshmnet, the drag up to the 425m summit of the Worcestershire Beacon, was slow but steady.

Atop the Worcestershire Beacon

We stayed on the summit ridge until we reached the Wyche cutting, from where it was a short walk to our B & B.

30-May-2009

Day 6: Continuing along the Ridge and Over the HerefordshireBeacon, then Descending into the Severn Valley

We set off from Wyche Keep in glorious morning sunshine...

Preparing to leave Wyche Keep

...and returned to the Wyche cutting. This pass through the hills was once part of the salt route from Droitwich to South Wales and a hoard of metal money bars found in the 19th century suggests it was in use as early as 250 BC.

We used the path from the cutting to climb back onto the ridge. It was distinctly breezy along the top and we stopped to watch the para-gliders. Their colleagues on the ground said the wind strength meant they were safe on the windward side of the hill, though they could not cope with the turbulence on the other side, and if the wind got any stronger they would have to pack up and go home.

Along the Malvern ridge watching the para-gliders.
For other versions of this view see Croome Court and the paintings of Antony Bridge

We descended towards the A449, the main pass through the the hills before climbing up and over the Herefordshire Beacon. The summit is covered in earthworks, some from 'British Camp', an iron age hill fort, and others from a later medieval castle. British Camp, like Caer Caradoc, has been touted as the site of Caractacus' last stand. The story comes from Tacitus, whose description places the battle far closer to the River Severn than either contender we encountered, but as he wrote fifty years after the event and never visited Britain, his accuracy may be questionable. It almost certainly happened somewhere, and the location of that somewhere is, and will probably remain, unknown.

British Camp on the Herefordshire Beacon

As the ridge began to peter out we turned east and descended into the broad, flat Severn valley

Across the Severn Valley

Despite being in more heavily populated farmland, our route provided no suitable pub for lunch. We arrived in Upton on Severn early enough to enjoy a cup of tea and a cake - a process which Mike always seems to find unreasonably pleasing - and a have a stroll through the market. Lynne bought two of the largest cauliflowers I have ever seen.

Walk over - posing by the Severn at Upton

And that was it for 2009, now for 2010

The South West Odyssey (English Branch)
Introduction
Day 1 to 3 (2008) Cardingmill Valley to Great Whitley
Day 4 to 6 (2009) Great Whitely to Upton-on-Severn via the Malvern Ridge
Day 7 to 9 (2010) Upton-on-Severn to Andoversford
Day 10 (2011) Andoversford to Perrott's Brook
Day 11 (2011) Perrott's Brook to the Round Elm Crossroads
Day 12 (2011) Walking Round Stroud
Day 13 (2012) Stroud to North Nibley
Day 14 (2012) North Nibley to Old Sodbury
Day 15 (2012) Old Sodbury to Swineford
Day 16 (2013) Along the Chew Valley
Day 17 (2013) Over the Mendips to Wells
Day 18 (2013) Wells to Glastonbury 'The Mountain Route'
Day 19 (2014) Glastonbury to Langport
Day 20 (2014) Along the Parrett and over the Tone
Day 21 (2014) Into the Quantocks
Day 22 (2015) From the Quantocks to the Sea
Day 23 (2015) Watchet, Dunster and Dunkery Hill
Day 24 (2015) Dunkery Beacon to Withypool
Day 25 (2016) Entering Devon and Leaving Exmoor
Day 26 (2016) Knowstone to Black Dog on the Two Moors Way
Day 27 (2016) Morchard Bishop to Copplestone
Day 28 (2017) Down St Mary to Drewsteignton
Day 29 (2017) Drewsteignton to Bennett's Cross
Day 30 (2017) Bennett's Cross to Lustleigh
Day 31 (2018) Southwest Across the Moor from Lustleigh
Day 32 (2018) South to Ugborough
Day 33 (2018) Ugborough to Ringmore
Day 34 (2019) Around the Avon Estuary to Hope Cove
Day 35 (2019): Hope Cove to Prawle Point
Day 36 (2019) Prawle Point to Start Bay: The End
+
The Last Post

That's All Folks - The Odyssey is done.

Monday, 25 August 2008

The Silk Road in China: Postscipt

[Update Jan 2020 at the end]

Xinjiang provided us with a host of wonderful memories, but we would rather forget the ever-present and overbearing security. We could not drive down a road, check into a hotel, get on a train or enter an airport without somebody wanting to know who we were and what we were doing or feeling a need to search our luggage. The Chinese have a problem in Xinjiang; there was a grenade and knife attack in Kashgar days before we arrived and a small bombing in Korla the same week. Tibet had burst into flames some months earlier [update: and since, in some cases quite literally, see Hue for comments and similarities] and, with the eyes of the world fixed on the Beijing Olympics, China was desperate to ensure that neither of their rebellious provinces made the wrong sort of headlines

And, indeed, there were no incidents, so to that extent they were successful, but successful was not how it felt.

Far from making us feel safer, we found the security threatening. At every check point there was an armed man with a little training and slightly less education. That makes him dangerous. It also makes him a target for those the government call ‘terrorists’. I have no desire to be killed in the cross fire of someone else’s war.

Generally, the security was irritating and ineffectual. I wondered at the roadblock in Kashgar that everybody knew how to avoid. I mocked the village copper who shouldered the responsibility of examining my Mongolian visa. I resented the arbitrary alterations to airline baggage rules; the confiscation of our belongings was only an inconvenience, but I cannot understand how 100 ml of aftershave threatened anybody’s safety. I marvelled at the number of times guards stopped us and made the driver open the boot and then, on seeing our suitcases, waved us straight through. I have no wish to bomb anybody, but if I did, I would probably put the bomb in a suitcase. Perhaps we did not fit the profile of a bomber, in which case why stop us at all?

I concluded that the authorities’ activities did little to provide security, but did much to wind up the locals and remind them who is in charge. By the time we left, I was almost ready to join the Uigher separatists.

And inevitably the riots did come, not in Kashgar or Hotan or any of the other Uigher cities around the rim of the Taklamakan, but in Han-dominated Urumqi. The spark was the perceived police inactivity in the case of two Uigher migrant workers beaten to death by a mob in southern China. Several deaths in fighting between Han and Uigher residents were followed by a heavy-handed police crackdown. Last month the courts sentenced six people to death for their part in the rioting. Precise figures are unavailable, but Amnesty International estimates that China carried out some eighteen hundred executions last year, two thirds of the world total. Not a record to be proud of.

Urumqi
Uigher capital, Han city

I do not imagine that Hu Jintao has waited breathlessly to read each new episode in this story, but it is in the public domain and anybody might see it so, I will not say where or how I met the person who asked, very quietly, ‘is it true that in the west you are allowed to criticise your government?’ ‘It is,’ I replied rather sanctimoniously, ‘a right we hold dear.’

Dwellings being demolished before being covered by the rising waters behind the
Three Gorges Dam

The Chinese Communist Party, which is communist in name only, has made a tacit deal with the Chinese people. ‘We’ll keep making you richer, and you won’t bother yourself with government.’ For most of the people most of the time, it works - you can stand in the street and almost feel the economy growing. But it does not work for everybody; it does not work for those flooded out of their homes by the Three Gorges Dam, it does not work for those summarily evicted to make way for Olympic building projects, and it does not work for the Tibetans and the Uighers. As prosperity grows, the ordinary Chinese will inevitably demand involvement in the decisions that affect their lives. The results of such tension between the people and a ruling party that accepts no criticism are unpredictable.

And are these 'homes' in the desert intended to replace them?

Uighers are Chinese only in the sense of their nationality. They do not look Chinese, they do not speak, read or write Chinese and they do not eat Chinese. It is an interesting thought that had Sir George McCartney, the long time British consul in Kashgar, been less diligent about keeping Russian hands off this area, then it could well have become part of the Soviet Union and would now be the independent state of Uigherstan. The British are often resented and occasionally admired for all sorts of things done – or not done – during the colonial era. Not even the most ardent Uigher nationalist has yet blamed us for this unforeseen consequence of British policy.

Uighers do not look Chinese....

Movements that pit small nations against larger oppressors always have a romantic attraction, but one I find resistible. Blaming foreigners, whether an internal minority or an external power, for all your troubles, at best distracts from acting to remedy the real problems, and at worst leads to the excesses of Nazi Germany and Rwanda. More progress is made when people work together. Given the state of the other ‘Stans’ and the growing Chinese prosperity, which may be reaching Xinjiang slowly, but is getting there, it should not be beyond the wit of the Chinese to make the Uighers want to remain part of their country.

The ‘Uigher Autonomous Region’ should be autonomous in more than merely name, and local people should be responsible for local decisions. The Chinese should stop being surprised when Uighers are ungrateful for the wholesale ‘Hanification’ of their towns and cities. They do appreciate the clean modern apartments with electricity and running water, but they resent the wholesale bulldozing of their heritage that has accompanied it – and more of old Kashgar has been flattened since we were there. And if local democracy would work in Xinjiang, then perhaps it could be rolled out across the whole of China.

Well, Hu Jintao, I doubt that you are reading this, but if you are, that is what I would do about your Xinjiang problem. Now Tibet is a rather more difficult but if I were you……. (continued on page 999)

[Update Jan 2020 I could see that the way the Han Chinese were treating the Uighers in 2008 was asking for trouble, but I did not forsee that the Chinese would avoid that trouble by stamping the heel of their boot onto the Uigher throat and keeping it there relentlessly. Xi Jinping has taken China backwards in many ways. Post-Mao Chinese leaders have been rigourously confined to a ten year term, Xi Jinping has ensured that he has the job for life. His treatment of the Uighers, wholesale detention in 're-education centres' and the bulldozing of mosques is a Crime against Humanity, but no one has the will to challenge him, let along the ability to stop him.]

The Chinese Silk Road

Introduction: The Silk Road in China

Prelude: Shanghai

1 Xi'an

2 Jiayuguan: A Total Eclipse and the Last Fortress under Heaven

3 Dunhuang: Dunes in the Gobi

4 Turpan: Ruined Cities of the Silk Road

5 Kashgar (1): The Sunday Market and the Former British Consulate

6 Kashgar (2): Upal, Abakh Hoja and the Old Town

7 Hotan (or Khotan or Hetian): City in the Desert

8 Urumqi: A By-word for Remoteness

Tuesday, 19 August 2008

Urumqi, A By-word for Remoteness: The Chinese Silk Road Part 8

!8/08/2008

At Urumqi, Rana greeted us like old friends. Her driver, too, looked a lot happier than at our tentative first encounter at Turpan..

Urumqi, First Impressions

As we drove to our hotel, Urumqi appeared cool, clean and green, with wide boulevards and well ordered traffic. I suspect our first impressions were somewhat skewed by having spent the previous weeks in the desert.

Our hotel was in the city centre, on the twenty-sixth floor of a block that was part hotel, part shopping mall and part nightclub. Getting to our room took some time as a massive wedding party was blocking up the lifts, but it was worth waiting for. We had a corner room, but instead of a corner, a floor to ceiling window afforded a magnificent view of the traffic wheeling about the roundabout below and the night market beside it, the barbecues firing up for a 9 pm start.

Urumqi from our hotel window

We took a walk to establish our bearings, replenish our stocks after the Hotan airport episode and get a second, perhaps more realistic, impression of the city. Urumqi is, without doubt, a place of contradictions: its name is a by-word for remoteness, yet a city of over two million can hardly feel remote; it is further from the sea than any other city in the world, yet every corner seemed to sport a seafood restaurant; it is the capital of the Uigher Autonomous Region of Xinjiang, yet the population is 90% Han Chinese. The architecture is Han too; Urumqi is built entirely in the style I think of as ‘Chinese brutalism’. It is also the gateway to Kazakhstan, and for the first time in China we saw signs in Cyrillic and heard Russian spoken in the streets.

'Chinese Brutalist' architecture
Urumqi

The day finished with barbecued pigeons and draught beer in the night market, and then a nightcap watching the flashing neon and whirling traffic from our glass-plated eyrie.

Tian Chi, The Heavenly Lake

Next morning our trip east to Tian Chi, the Heavenly Lake, took just over an hour. We drove through the residential and industrial areas of the city and then out through the agricultural belt until we seemed to be returning to the desert. Turning off the main road, we rose quickly into the mountains. The air became colder and the surroundings greener, and we passed several outbreaks of yurts, the homes of Kazakh nomads – another of China’s vast selection of ethnic minorities. Unlike the well-spaced gers of the Mongolians, which are almost randomly pitched wherever their owners fancy spending the summer, these were substantial organised encampments, each tent standing on a circular concrete base.

Kazakh yurts

We made our way upwards through Alpine scenery until we arrived at a commercial village that might have been in Switzerland or Austria, but for the curly Chinese roofs. Here we left the car and braved a metal detector (Lynne’s bag was carefully passed round the outside) before boarding a bus for the next stage of the journey upwards. At the terminus we transferred into a ten-seater electric buggy for the final short pull up to the lake.

Tian Chi - yes this is China, even if there are no curly roofs in shot

Heavenly Lake is the most beautiful teardrop of water.

Tian Chi - a most beautiful teardrop of water

Tamed for tourism and swarmed over by hundreds of Chinese trippers, each group following its flag-waving leader with ovine dedication, it easily retains its picture postcard perfection. The lake lies in a bowl in the mountains and we found ourselves looking down on cold, blue green water that lay like silk gently riffling in the breeze. Beyond the lake, the mountains rise behind a series of interlocking spurs to soaring snow covered peaks over 4000 metres high.

Obedient Chinese tour groups, Tian Chi

We made our way down to a landing stage where boats sat ready to take the hordes for a cruise. There was no metal detector here, but it was deemed necessary to search Lynne’s handbag. Either the Chinese authorities believe terrorists use different techniques for attacks on buses and boats, or the main purpose of security is to give the appearance of doing something.

Boats at the landing stage, Tian Chi

Rows of seats had been set out on the roof of the boat and we sat in the scorching sunshine waiting for the other chairs to fill up. In due course we cast off. The coolness of the slight breeze and the drop in temperature as the boat’s superstructure placed us briefly in the shade were sharp reminders that we were at a almost 2000 metres.

Our first stop was at a Taoist temple on a low rise at the corner of the lake. It is much visited, we were assured, by Taiwanese pilgrims coming to pray. Clearly there were few Taiwanese about that day as only one person got off and nobody got on. The rest of the trip was merely a trip around the lake; a simple and elemental pleasure that crosses boundaries of race and temperament with ease.

Taoist temple, Tian Chi

We returned to Urumqi for lunch. ‘Would you like Uigher or Chinese?’ Rana asked. We thought we might give lambkind a rest for a day and opted for Chinese. ‘Veggies!’ said Rana with a distinctly Un-Uigherlike enthusiasm for green food.

Urumqi Museum, The Loulan Beauty and other Exhibits

Later, full of veggies, not to mention chicken, peanuts, tofu, chillies, mushrooms and rice we made our way to the Urumqi museum.

A queue outside was waiting for the museum to open. I expected the car to drop us off so that we could join it, but instead we drove straight up to the expanding gates blocking the entrance. One word from Rana and the gates folded themselves up and we swept into the courtyard and right up to the doors of the museum, leaving everybody else standing in the hot sun.

I try to enjoy VIP treatment on the rare occasions it happens, but I cannot quite ignore the nagging little egalitarian socialist sitting inside me fuming about the privileged classes and demanding I get back in the queue immediately. Even deeper inside is the voice of my Cardiganshire ancestors, a people renowned for depth of pocket and shortness of arm, saying ‘You’ll have to pay for this, you know. They’ll want money; they will, they really will.’

Urumqi museum is a fine ethnographic museum, devoted to the life of the Uighers and all those who made Xinjiang their home before them. What makes it exceptional is the mummy room containing bodies and treasure unearthed from the lost settlements that pre-date even the Silk Road. The bad news was that the mummy room was closed, the good news was that it would be opened especially for us and there would be a personal guided tour by a member of the museum staff. ‘I’m warning you,’ said a Cardie voice in my left year.

Sterile desert sand is a wonderful preserver of human remains. Unlike the Egyptian examples, those of the Taklamakan were naturally mummified and did not undergo the processes Egyptian corpses were subjected to. Those that survive are remarkably well preserved.

The best known is the ‘Loulan Beauty’, a slender, flaxen haired lady some four thousand years old. Her ‘beauty’ is somewhat in the eye of the beholder, but her clothing is so well preserved it is possible to say that she was not rich, as they are her everyday clothes, and that her shoes have been repaired not once but twice.

The Loulan Beauty
As they did not allow me to take photographs this one comes from Cultural-china.com

Another woman, buried in new clothes and a pointed felt hat decorated with feathers, is deemed less beautiful, but richer. What is clear about both of them, rich or poor, beautiful or plain, is that they are not Chinese. ‘Look,’ our Chinese guide said, ‘they are European,’ and she turned to Lynne, ‘she has a big nose, like you.' I said nothing about the guide’s eyes.

Their DNA suggests these people may have originated in west Eurasia, possibly from what is now Ukraine. The weaving has been compared to that found on the mummies of Austrian salt miners of roughly the same period. If this merely led to a twinning arrangement between Kiev, Salzburg and Urumqi everyone would be pleased, but the mummy’s ethnicity is politically charged. The Chinese are reluctant to admit that anyone other than them has ever ruled in what is now Xinjiang, but even they cannot explain away the round eyes and yellow hair. The Uighers claim that Xinjiang has always been theirs and these mummies prove it, but they are clearly not Uigher either. Claiming eternal sovereignty based on the earliest known inhabitants is, surely, a futile game. Except for a few families in the Rift Valley, we are all migrants and it seems that Bronze Age Xinjiang was a melting pot; some of the early inhabitants were Eurasians, others Indian and some Chinese.

The museum authorities try to play a straight bat by displaying all their mummies together. Alongside the Caucasians is a high ranking Chinese army officer, his bowed legs suggesting he spent much of his life in the saddle. There is also the reconstructed burial pit of a wooden effigy; archaeologists speculate the actually body was, for some reason, unavailable for burying.

Afterwards our guide took us into a back room. ‘All the articles in here,’ she said 'are less than a hundred years old and the government has given us permission to sell them.’ It is strange how Chinese museums always seem keen to sell their exhibits to casual visitors.

‘This is where you pay,’ whispered the Atavistic Cardie. We sat down with several members of the museum staff and drank tea while they showed us a selection of resistible jade jewellery. ‘Actually, I’d quite like a silk top,’ Lynne said, pointing at the racks of clothing. ‘Now they’re ganging up on you,’ AC hissed.

Lynne found a top she liked, and the museum curator, turned salesperson, named a price. It was too small a number to be Yuan, so the next job was to discover which currency she intended bargaining in. It seemed the Euro was her coin of choice so we haggled for a while in a currency I did not have and anyway she could not accept. Eventually we agreed on a figure, and then on an exchange rate into Yuan, and soon Lynne became the proud owner of a deep pink embroidered blouse of real silk. I had to admit it was very attractive and, considering we had a personal tour of the mummy room, good value for 30 Euros. In West Wales the sound of rotating corpses filled several graveyards.

We spent the rest of the afternoon happily looking round the ethnographic section and the evening looking through the night market for something appetising.

Urumqi Night Market

Disappointingly, the most wholesome offerings were the inevitable mutton kebabs, but eventually we settled for a fish on a stick - a charred-looking but pleasant tasting bass-shaped creature with firm white flesh - along with some aubergines, mushrooms and bamboo shoots.

Barbecued fish, Urumqi night market

19/08/2008

Visiting the Kazakh Nomads, Urumqi

In the morning, we headed north to visit the Kazakh nomads. If the road to Tian Chi had been mercifully free of security hassles, this trip made up for it, with a succession of officials keen to write down the registration of every car that passed. The final check point seemed rather different and money changed hands. I realised that we were paying the Kazakhs to visit their village.

A selection of more than fifty yurts stood in a compound next to the main road. After some negotiation with an older woman, Rana led the way into the compound and then into one of the yurts. Although of similar design, there were several obvious differences, apart from the concrete base and the mains electricity supply, between the yurt and Mongolian gers we had stayed in previously. The two supporting poles of a ger divide the space in three, the left for men, the right for women, and the centre for Buddha. All the furniture is placed around the edge and Buddha’s space contains the stove, its chimney rising through the central hole. A yurt manages to stand without the supporting poles, allowing the space to be divided in two. The back two thirds containing a raised wooden platform for sleeping and eating, whilst the front contains the cooking equipment, the chimney going through a second opening in the roof.

Kazakh yurt village

In the yurt a girl in her late teens was being plagued by a couple of smaller boys. The boys were persuaded to remove the overloud, depressingly westernised pop music from the CD player, and then they brought bowls of sweets, a heap of what seemed to be fried dough balls and bowls of tea. The tea was very like Mongolian tea, a touch of salt, a great deal of tepid milk and virtually no tea.

Inside a yurt

There was some conversation between the girl and Rana and then the three Kazakhs disappeared. I asked Rana what language they were speaking. She said she was speaking Uigher and the girl was speaking Kazakh. ‘And you understand each other?’ I asked. Rana pulled a face, ‘sort of’ she said.

With that she left us, perhaps to clarify a point in the conversation. We were left alone for rather longer than it takes to drink a bowl of milky tea and discover the fried dough balls were blandly unappetising. We would have liked to have a poke around, but we were in somebody’s home and it seemed rude, so we just sat and waited.

Me and a rather pensive Rana, some milky tea and fried dough balls

In time Rana reappeared with the girl who had slipped Kazakh national costume over her jeans and tee-shirt. She put on a CD of traditional music and danced a couple of folk dances. We were a small audience, but she threw herself into the performance, and earned as generous a round of applause as six hands can manage.

Dancing Kazakh

Walking back to the car we watched two large hawks flying just above head height, quartering the area in a search for mice, voles or small Kazakh children. Down by the road a few stalls supplied daily needs and several battered snooker table supplied entertainment. A group of boys were pushing balls around with bent cues rather than playing a proper game, but it was nonetheless a somewhat surreal sight.

Snooker among the Kazakhs

Last Uigher Lunch

Lunch back in Urumqi would be our last meal in Xinjiang, so it had to be Uigher fare and Rana was determined that we would have every Uigher delicacy on the table at once. There was laghman (mutton with noodles), pilaf (mutton with rice), pie (mutton with pastry) and kebabs (mutton with skewers). No messing with green food here, though some pumpkin dumplings provided light relief.

Back to Shanghai

After that there was nothing else we could do but leave. We were well prepared after the Hotan airport incident and this time had no difficulty with the x-ray zealots. That was not true of a Chinese man at a nearby check-in desk. As the altercation went on his voice became louder and shriller. He clearly had no level-headed wife telling him to shut up and the last we saw he was being marched away by the police, still shouting and now struggling as well.

We were starting our journey home, so we flew back to Shanghai, five hours in the wrong direction. Approaching the coast we skirted a dramatic thunderstorm but by the time we had landed and the doors were opened it was right on top of us. There was a minor passenger revolt as we refused to disembark until the rain had eased.

Such rain cannot last long and by the time we were through the airport it was eleven o’clock and a warm, dry Shanghai night. The taxi queue would have stretched halfway back to Urumqi had it not been wound around metal barriers. A taxi tout approached us and offered his services. He was scornful of our refusal, ‘well if you want to queue all night…’ he said and stomped off. In fact, the queue moved quickly, the taxis were arriving five abreast and a group of men with the inevitable armbands were marshalling proceedings with efficiency. As we left the airport we saw the line of incoming taxis stretching several miles down the road. We were right to ignore the tout, if he was prepared to cheat his fellow drivers then he would have had few qualms about cheating us as well.

Last Day in Shanghai

We spent the next day in Shanghai doing a little shopping. A fair part of it was spent in a teashop, tasting and buying. Tea in China is like wine around the Mediterranean, it is plentiful and most of it is cheap but the rare and special cuvées demand special prices. Like wine there is almost no upper limit to what you can pay, so a little preliminary tasting is well worthwhile.

Tasting tea in Shanghai

It was strange, but after the wilds of Xinjiang, Shanghai seemed comfortable and familiar. We wondered what London would feel like.

and finally....
Thanks are due to TravelChinaGuide who supplied drivers and guides and made all the land arrangements from Xi'an to Urumqi. Their efficiency and their ability to reply to every email within 24 hours regardless of the time of day or week they are received is awe-inspiring.