Ozgon and Jalal-Abad

After four nights and three days resting and recuperating in Osh (after arriving in the city on a cramped four-hour taxi ride I could barely straighten my knee and was seriously wondering if I would need medical attention), I decided to get things moving again and head to Jalal-Abad with a stop in Ozgen.

Although in Soviet times you could go straight across the valley from Osh to Jalal-Abad, the direct route now involves crossing into Uzbekistan before returning to Kyrgyzstan, so everyone now takes the route that skirts Uzbekistan and goes through Ozgon.

In CIS countries, the marshrutka ("fixed route") is a staple of public transport. In Central Asia they're basically old Mercedes minibuses that have maybe 15 seats that travel a fixed route and pick up and drop off people along the way. Inside cities they can be jammed with people standing anywhere they can, while on inter-city routes they leave when all seats are occupied (though they may pick up standing-room passengers between cities) and not before. Prices are also fixed, and foreigners don't generally need to haggle. Share taxis between cities operate on the same leave-when-full principle, though haggling for prices in these sedans and minivans is essential (not least because many of them are simply private citizens or families making a trip somewhere and hoping to defray fuel costs). An added complexity is that on fares often changes depending on whether there is more demand in one direction than the other and whether there is increased seasonal demand. Perhaps the most difficult thing for travelers is that the places where share taxis congregate and leave depends on where they're going, and can change quite rapidly in ways that guidebooks can't keep up with.

Anyway, the trip to Ozgon was my first experience with marshrutkas, and it was actually quite easy since it left from the central lot near the bazaar, was clearly signed to Jalal-Abad, and only involved a 20-minute wait until it was full. Were that it was always so easy.

Ozgon

Ozgon gets a surprisingly tepid write-up in Lonely Planet, which usually turns on the hype over every little thing that could even possibly be described as an attraction. There isn't a lot to see, with the only real attraction other than its bazaar being an Karakhanid-era complex containing an 11th century minaret and a 12-century tripartite mausoleum.

Despite being relatively modest in comparison to other Central-Asian sites, in the Kyrgyzstani context they must be some of the most important cultural artefacts that remain in the country, and they remain impressive in my mind for their warm, red, monochrome design and the sympathetic restoration they're been subject too. These aren't the over-the-top reconstructions you see in China or Uzbekistan, but a fairly straightforward mix of modern and surviving brickwork.

The minaret sits next to a parking lot and Russian-style civic buildings.

Ozgon itself is on a hill at the edge of the Ferghana valley.

The ornate brickwork of one of the mausoleum entrances.

The minaret and mausoleum.

Detail of the new and surviving brickwork.

Hotan: the carpet factory, silk workshop, and desert tombs in one easy day

The overnight bus I took from Kashgar to Hotan had the most convenient hours and the cheapest price—86 yuan versus the 115 I paid to get to Kashgar from Hotan—but the 30 yuan discount was the result of the bus lacking air conditioning. In practice this really wasn't the problem you might expect, as the window of the bus opened and I felt perfectly fine with my head sitting next to the open road as I slept (although I had this somewhat irrational fear of falling out of the bus through contortionate sleeping).

My plan for the day was basically to visit the tomb of the four imams after first visiting the other sights en route: the jade market (again), the carpet factory (again), and the silk workshop. Other than that, simply soaking up the local atmosphere and wandering around town would be enough for me.

To get to the silk workshop or the tomb of the four imams, take a bus to Jiya, which will be marked only in Chinese with "吉亚乡." You can catch this bus from the East Bus Station, or from just north of the underpass that's just north of the carpet workshop. On the map below, the stops are: the carpet workshop; where you can catch the bus to Jiya; the Atlas silk workshop (tell the driver, but also keep an eye out on the right); and the tomb of the four imams (Asim Imam), which is a few kilometers past the end of the Jiya bus line. Although Google might tell you that bus 10 runs all the way to the carpet factory, in my experience it always follows the route below but turns around a couple of blocks before the river.

Carpet Factory

On this visit to the carpet factory there were a lot more weavers about, and I was able to wander around and view more of the buildings. You could see the facilities where they washed and dyed the yarn, where they washed the carpets, as well as a shop where they displayed completed carpets. All of these rooms and buildings were completely empty, however (even the shop/storeroom), and I get the sense that they really only gear things up and staff the shop when they have a tour group coming through. That's fine with me, as it was nice to be able to simply wander around.

Two weavers working on a small carpet.

On larger carpets, more weavers work.

Watching them work, it's evident how huge an investment in time hand-knotting carpets is. The fact that they're even somewhat affordable is a testament to how underpaid the weavers/knotters are, and it's no surprise that child slavery is used in South Asia or that many carpets are made by women who are culturally unable to work outside of their home.

They say that weavers can tie about 10,000 knots per day. Assume a knot density of 200 knots per square inch on this rug (which would be considered very good, but far from the 600+ found in ultra-fine rugs) and that's only 50 square inches, or about 2 inches of vertical per day on this carpet being woven by 6 women. If this carpet is 20 feet long, it will take 6 women 120 days of weaving to complete it. This kind of puts the price in perspective.

Camels grazing by the side of the White Jade river. It looks like camels can eat anything.

Is that camel on the left super-pregnant, or what? I don't know, because other camels were still nursing their young. It appears they don't wean their calves until they're up to 2 years old, though.

Mother and child.

I think I like camels more than horses. They seem to have distinct and readily-apparent personalities in way that horses do not, which makes them easier to relate to or understand—even if their personality frequently manifests itself in surliness.

Atlas Silk Workshop

From the carpet workshop, you turn right along the road as you exit and walk north for a while until you pass under another large road (this is the road that the buses to Jiya take). Keep walking north until you get to the petrol station and truck stop on the right, as the buses to Jiya will stop here if you flag them down. Probably any small buses that passes here is on its way to Jiya, but look for the Chinese "吉亚乡" to be sure. Tell the driver you want to go to the Atlas silk workshop (they tend to recognize "Atlas"), but keep your eyes peeled because my driver forgot about it while talking to passengers. Atlas is the Uyghur word for the Ikat dyeing process, as is commonly seen in women's dress in Xinjiang.

When open, the silk factory is interesting, and you might be able to see all aspects of the Ikat-manufacturing process, from the raw silk cocoons to the boiling and spinning of the yarn, to the tying and dyeing process, to the weaving of the fabric. Of course, there's a shop in the center of the facility (the production buildings ring the central courtyard), but there's also no pressure of any sort and you're free to just wander around.

The workshop was quite interesting. If you're headed to Margilon, Uzbekistan, there's a silk workshop there, too, which you can also visit. The Margilon workshop is perhaps a bit more comprehensive and organized, and you'll be escorted by a guide as well as have the opportunity to see commercial weaving machines in operation.

Raw silk cocoons stored outside.

The cocoons are heated and softened, then strands of silk are teased from them, gathered, and collected on a spinning wheel.

Spinning silk on a bicycle wheel.

The silk is prepared for dyeing by running silk thread over a stand, looping the thread back and forth, and then gathering them into bundles. These bundles are then tied (or taped) together in geometric patterns, and the dyed: the taped areas resist the dyes. This is then repeated until you get the desired coloration, with the lightest dyes being applied first.

The pre-dyed warp threads on the loom, while the weaver throws the weft shuttle back and forth.

The loom setup: a ball of dyed yarn runs to the stone weight, which provides tension to the loom. There the yarns are split up and arranged into matching geometric bundles which are run over the loom.

A lot of work goes into a $10 scarf. Either that or the $10 scarves are not hand made.

A male weaver! He invited me to throw the shuttle a few times. I would make a lousy weaver.

There's a scene in Once Upon a Time in Anatolia where the police, who are searching for a body in a back-water village in Turkey, happen upon an outrageously attractive girl who serves them tea at an otherwise unprepossessing teahouse. Everythng in the films stops at that moment, as all the characters are stunned into silence by her beauty, yet none of the comment on it.

Something similar happened at the workshop's showroom. There was this young Uyghur girl, maybe 17, dressed in a gorgeous light green and tan silk dress and scarf, with light green eyes and a pale complexion. She looked something like the famous green-eyed girl on the cover of National Geographic, but less wild and more European. Stunning. As with the Hui girl in Dunhuang, she was someone I would have loved to take a picture of, but there's no way I could do so without feeling somehow intrusive or pervy about it.

Tomb of the Four Imams (Asim Imam)

Sometimes I wonder if Lonely Planet writers really visit the places they write about. I mean, I already know from my time in Kharkhorin that Michael Kohn researched things by reading other people's blogs, but when reading what he had to say about Asim Imam I really had to question if he had even visited it. He simply writes that it has "an interesting cemetery" and is a good place to "slide down the sand dunes." I'm not sure what kind of image that paints in your mind, but it certainly didn't suggest to me what I actually saw. Sure, there are dunes, but they're hardly of the height you would slide down (unlike in Dunhuang, where there are actual toboggan and inner-tube slides), and to say that it is an interesting cemetery is a bit like saying an ossuary or a catacomb is an interesting cemetery. In reality, Asim Imam is unlike any "cemetery" you are likely to see in China or Central Asia, as the graves or tombs are flag-festooned poles in the desert. These structures strongly resemble Mongolian ovoo and Tibetan latse, and it's unlikely a coincidence that the tombs commemorate a Muslim general who turned the region towards Islam and away from Buddhism with his conquests. As with the ovoo and the latse, these structures seem rather shamanistic when compared to mainline Islam burials, and the fact that local women make wishes and puncture the bark of nearby trees to see if their wishes will be granted (if sap runs, they will) is another telling sign of this.

Tombs in the desert, unlike any Muslim tomb you're likely to see again.

Uyghur on a pilgrimage.

The walk to the mosque is littered with tombs.

Dunes with the mosque dome in the background.

The minaret towers over the grape vines that provide shade.

The tomb of Asim Imam.

Looking at the minaret through raisins curing on the vine.

Looks pretty similar to a Tibetan latse to me.

Giant slabs of coal next to the irrigation canal, on the road through Jiya.

Corn fields beyond the poplar-lined street.

I think of this road often, as it was about 20 kilometers of poplar-lined tarmac filled with the warm and friendly faces of traditional Uyghur. It's everything I had hoped I would be able to find in Central Asia, with the real surprise being that I found it in China.

Motorcycles and trikes for the Uyghur. In Han China proper cars would be more typical.

Call to prayer near the carpet factory.

There's absolutely nothing unusual about this scene in Hotan.

I wound up my time in Hotan by walking around and looking at some of the more modern shops around the city center. They're not nearly as interesting as the Uyghur sections and the traditional market, but probably a sign of what's to come.

I then went back to Marco's Dream Cafe—the owner was surprised to see me since she knew I was only staying for the day the last time I was there—where I repaid my debt to her travel binder by adding my own note about how to get to all the sights in and around Jiya. Hopefully future visitors to her cafe will buy more than I did (her Malaysian food is quite good and would be a nice reprieve for those wanting a change from Uyghur and Chinese food).

Budget

August 28, 2012: 178 yuan

• Bus to Kashgar: 115 yuan
• Polo: 4 yuan
• Drinks: 19 yuan
• City bus: 5 yuan
• Dinner: 18 yuan
• Drinks, fruit and snacks for bus: 17 yuan

Hotan: a lesson in why you shouldn't trust Lonely Planet

Even though it was a sleeper bus, we arrived in Hotan before midnight. Although there were no hostels in Hotan, there were a few places that were supposed to be reasonably cheap, one of which was the Transport Hotel (most bus stations have attached hotels). They wouldn't sell me a room for less than 160 yuan, however. I then set out for the other cheapish hotel listed for Hotan, but the horrible maps and terrible directions for Hotan meant it took me about an hour to find where the hotel was supposed to be, only to discover from a security guard that it wasn't there. After a couple of hours of looking for cheap places that could accept foreigners, I ended up sleeping out in front of the bus station—next to the snack vendors also sleeping beside their stalls—for a couple of hours that night, and checking my bag at the station's bag storage in the morning.

Breakfast was a bowl of polo—rice pilaf—with carrots (but without any mutton) from a street vendor. Cost: 4 yuan.

Big wok of polo.

Mao shakes the hand of Kurban Tulum, a grateful Uygher farmer who traveled a long way by donkey cart to bring him some local fruit. Thanks, Mao! Kurban is seen by many Uyghur as an Uncle Tom figure.

The Hotan museum had been closed for a while, but had recently reopened when I was there. It's an older museum & building, but it's still pretty decent and has a couple of mummies as its highlights.

This one is really well preserved, and much more Han looking than the more famous ones—like the Loulan Beauty—in Urumqi. Perhaps that's why they allow photography here, and not in Urumqi?

Turpan & Jiaohe

The Turpan depression is the lowest point in China, and the second lowest in the world after the Deadd Sea, at 155 meters below sea level. It's also the hottest place in China, with a recorded high of 48°C.

Turpan was also my first exposure to Xinjiang, even if it was almost 800 km from the border with Gansu. As the bus from Dunhuang was ultimately headed for Urumqi, I was dropped off at the northern end of town, where the highway clips the edge of town.

I had no idea where I was but started walking south along a major road. I eventually reached town, but even at 8:00 in the morning I had to stop a few times to cool down. After walking around the center of town for a bit, I headed to the Turpan Hotel—which was supposed to have dorms—hoping that they still accepted foreigners. It took a while for the English-speaking attendant to show up, but she said I would be able to check in later—I think they accepted foreigners because they were a large three-star hotel that also hosted tour groups in their main hotel operations.

When I checked in that afternoon, I discovered that the dorms were actually located in the basement of a side building whose entrance was to the right of the main hotel entrance steps. Lots of people seem to complain about these dorms, but in my mind they were actually pretty good: 3 beds in an air-conditioned room with a TV and attached bathroom featuring a western toilet, and daily cleaning from hotel staff, all for the typical hostel price 50 yuan per night. Given that hostels usually lack AC and are much dirtier, being in a fairly dark and humid room (there was window high up on the wall, but always closed since people tend to use AC instead) was fine with me, especially since I didn't plan on being there that much.

Emin Ta Minaret aka Sugong Ta

After dropping my bag at the hotel, I decided to see one of the major attractions in Turpan: the Emin Ta Minaret.

You can take bus 1, 6, or 102 to get there. I took bus 6, which takes back streets and drops you off near the rear entrance to the mosque. I ended up walking all the way around to the front entrance because I couldn't read the signs pointing out the shortcut access, which seemed to indicate it was an exit only. It was a pleasant walk through empty backstreets bordering on grape fields, and much more interesting than simply being dropped off directly at the entrance.

Anyway, a bigger problem is that Lonely Planet calls it Emin Ta—and only gives the Chinese characters for Emin Ta—when everybody local calls it Sugong Ta and the signs and buses only use this name (苏公塔). This makes it kind of tough to tell if you're getting on the right bus, not least since the buses don't all seem to have numbers on them.

The back roads that bus 6 takes you over is a nice introduction to Xinjiang, however, as you pass through dusty streets lined with mud-brick houses—all very monochrome and Central-Asian looking. Between this kind of architecture and the poplar trees, this is the sort of landscape I was expecting, and hoping, to see in Central Asia. Dunhuang may have offered a taste of it, but this is where it really felt like the Silk Road was beginning.

Muslim cemetery near Emin Ta, with typical Turpan lattice-brick grape-drying houses in background.

Beds in front of houses and in the streets are a common sight in scorching-hot Turpan.

Living quarters below, grape-drying on top, and sleeping platform out front.

View of Emin Ta over grape vines.

The minaret is 44 meters high and richly ornamented with decorative brickwork.

Modern admission gate to the mosque complex.

Below the mosque's main entrance.

Hohhot & Inner Mongolia

Erenhot to Hohhot to Hostel: an exercise in frustration

Once I made my way from the random location where the jeep from the border dropped me off in Erenhot, I made my way to the railway station to get a ticket on the train to Hohhot. Unfortunately, it turned out that the train to Hohhot wasn't running that day, so I would have to make alternate plans. I went outside, and there was a bus parked out front, but it turned out that it was only running to Beijing. One of the Mongolian kids getting on the bus was interested in me, since I was a foreigner, and his mom spoke a little English. She talked to the driver, and when they heard I wanted to go to Hohhot, they told me to wait and that there would be a bus. They gave me a ride to the bus station and told me where I could get a ticket to Hohhot. Since Lonely Planet had no useful information on Erenhot, I would have been in a real jam without their help—a GPS with offline maps would also have been a lifesaver on so many occassions.

Anyway, the bus to Hohhot was interesting. All the passengers were Chinese, and they displayed typical Chinese manners: eating sunflower seeds and spitting the shells on the ground, which is also where they put their garbage; smoking even though it's a non-smoking bus; and generally being noisy and annoying. A couple of times we passed really touristy ger camps—complete with concrete gers or lots of modern buildings or restaurants surrounded by a few traditional gers (which the Chinese call Mongolian steamed buns)—and whenever we passed them the Chinese would whip out their cameras and furiously take pictures of them... on a trip in Inner Mongolia from the Mongolian border to Hohhot. I think this tells you something about just how Mongolian Inner Mongolia is—even if they do technically still use the traditional Mongolian script there.

I arrived in Hohhot an hour or so before sunset, and immediately went next door to the train station to try and buy an overnight ticket to Pingyao for departure the next evening. I was lucky enough to get a hard sleeper berth, in what was one of my easier ticket-buying experiences. This station also had turnstiles at the exit lanes to prevent queue jumping, which was a nice touch.

The next objective was to find the hostel recommended in Lonely Planet, the Anda Guesthouse. It turns out that they not only had the Anda placed incorrectly on the map, but Michael Kohn had completely botched the written directions on how to get there, with incorrect streets, incorrect bus stops, and instructions to go one direction when you were supposed to go the opposite direction. It took almost 90 minutes to find the hostel from the time I was two blacks away. When I finally arrived and checked in, other travelers told me similar stories of futility.

There was a 60-something Australian lady staying in my room that night, and we swapped storied and recommendations as she was coming from Central Asia and headed towards Mongolia—the opposite path as me. I think I got the better end of the deal, as she wrote down some recommendations in my Lonely Planet on the best places to stay and get information, whereas I only told her how to get to UB by local train.

The 2012 Olympics were on at that point, and the girls working at the hostel were eagerly watching. Chinese Olympic coverage seems to be like American: very patriotic and covering mainly the events that they do well. So they were naturally showing women's weightlifting, and I got to hear commentary from the Chinese girls about how mannish the lifters from other countries looked. Not that the Chinese lifters looked particularly feminine, but whatever.

One day in Hohhot

Inner Mongolia, like Tibet and Xinjiang, is an Aurtonomous Region. This is meant to reflect their distinct cultures and suggest additional autonomy, but in practice I think it's all window dressing. Inner Mongolia should be an example to both Tibet and Xinjiang as to just how successful Beijing can be in replacing minority communities and population with Han immigrants, though: Hohhot is almost 90% Han, with only about 9% being Mongol and 2% being Hui Mulsim; Inner Mongolia as a whole is 79% Han and only 17% Mongol.

In Hohhot you'll see Mongolian script on a lot of buildings, and the typically blocky style of quotidean Chinese architecture is enlivened with ger-like decorations on the tops of many buildings, but the feeling on the streets is decidedly Han, with the most exotic and noticeable accents coming from the Hui minority, and not the Mongols. I wonder if part of this isn't because China is a food-centric culture, and Hui food is better than Mongolian food. Of course, the fact that Hui are just Muslim Han while Mongols are not Han may have something to do with it, too.

There's a world of difference between Mongolian parks and this park in Hohhot. For one, Hohhot hardly looks anything like Ulaanbaatar (both are classified as cold semi-arid climates), as there are artificial ponds, green grasses, and lush trees. But the bigger difference is in terms of how people use the parks: in China they're real places of communal socialization and heavily used as such (here by the ubiquitous ballroom dancers).

Rollerblading class.

Mongol newlyweds in front of ornamental pond.