I woke feeling like death warmed up. Had I caught Alan's dreadful bug or was it delayed methanol poisoning from the horrible red wine we drank on the first night of our stay? It didn't matter. I choked down several Lomotil and Stematil and hoped the medication would work before our 250 kilometer journey to Kashgar. Unlike our last trip where we had both suffered from the dreadful "Bukhara Belly" syndrome, we had armed ourselves with a plentiful supply of anti-diarrohea and anti-vomiting medication.

What a waste I thought as I sat miserably sipping on my glass of Coca Cola, watching the friendly photographers and Alan down a beautifully presented buffet breakfast. I have read that on average some 70% of overseas travellers come down with "travellers' stomach sickness" but on this trip I was really hoping we would avoid it. I consoled myself that at the very least I would lose some weight...

Our newly found friend Sliman-the-Taxi-Driver arrived at our hotel on time, brightly greeted us and the hotel staff like long lost relatives, and before we knew it had marched off purposefully with some of our baggage to his car. To my dismay, the little Suzuki looked more beaten up, even smaller and less roadworthy than the day before. We said farewell to the surprised looking hotel staff and set off on our way to Kashgar. Or so we thought.

Despite our lack of Uighur language, it didn't take long to work out that something was awfully wrong. After some 15 minutes we had still not left Tashkorgan. Our gregarious friend was looking concerned, driving slower and slower around the back streets of town, his head glued to his mobile phone and talking flat out to a number of people. We stopped at a mechanic's yard for some time and then for ages at a petrol station - without getting any petrol. Sliman was becoming more and more agitated and despite his reassurances that everything was alright, he didn't give us any confidence that we would be undertaking our 250 kilometer trip to Kashgar. In a nauseous blur I idly wondered whether he was going to stop the car and rob us of our belongings. After all, he had no taxi identification on his car and we really didn't have a clue who he was. But he was such an affable person. I tried hard to reason that when you are travelling sometimes you just have to put faith in people you don't know. Don't you....? By then it was 11.00 am and we had gone nowhere.

We had just begun our trip along the Karakoram Highway when Sliman suddenly blurted out "I think you should go with another taxi. I have a friend who will take you". We disagreed, saying we wanted to stay with him, especially now we were somehow packed into his sardine can of a car with all our luggage. But we were totally out of control and we knew it.

Eventually Sliman pulled over to the side of the road and said nothing. Not knowing quite what to do we let the silence go. After some ten minutes another car pulled up and the driver signaled for us to join him. And so we did. Good one Alan, I thought. This is a real bargain.... Goodness knows where we will end up. At least our new vehicle was a taxi and was a reasonably new looking Mitsubishi. The taxi driver, a kindly looking middle-aged Uighur man who spoke no English at all, took our bags. We shook our heads in disbelief, waved goodbye to our friend Sliman and we were off to Kashgar once again. And wondering what the hell we were doing. 

Our driver Mohammad drove very carefully and slowly. So slowly that we began to wonder if there was another problem. The road was in very good condition and there was no traffic. On several occasions, Mohammad stopped the car, motioned for us to stay put and disappeared for around 30 minutes each time. We had absolutely no idea what was going on*. But we were beginning to get concerned as we really needed to cash some money in Kashgar before the banks closed at 1.00 pm. And I was praying that my stomach would last the distance without something embarrassing happening.

We were travelling along the Karakoram Highway through the high valleys of the Taghdumbash Pamir range at a height of around 3,000 meters. Shortly after we left Tashkorgan we passed the turn off to to the Wakhan Corridor. It is just 50 kilometers from here to the Afghanistan border. An hour and a half later we passed the turnoff to Tajikistan just 13 kilometers from the Karakoram Highway.

In the distance was the looming, brooding Mustagh Ata Mountain. At a height of 7,546 meters this gigantic massive dominates the landscape with its imposing snow capped peaks, jagged rocky outcrops and folded chocolate foothills. Buff and dun coloured rocky outcrops gave way to moist alpine pastures grazed by yaks and camels, and tended by local Kyrgyz people.
 
Life is hard for the Kyrgyz inhabitants whose run down square mud brick huts and yurts dot the high alpine pastures flanked by the bleak wind blown scree slopes of bare arid mountainous terrain. In fact it is impossible to imagine just how these people survive in such an arid and severely cold environment where maximum daily winter temperatures average -4.2 degrees C.

At one of our stops a young Kyrgyz girl wearing a red jumper and skirt, and a red baseball cap approached our car with an armful of beads. Her mother disappeared into a hovel of a nearby shanty obviously hoping that her daughter would have more success than she would in selling her goods. Unfortunately, were just about out of Chinese currency and needed every last Yuan just in case things went haywire again. The young girl was charming and tried her very best to sell her jewellery. We felt very sorry we were unable to buy anything from her.

We had travelled this route three times before and the mountainous journey was just as spectacular. Not far from Mustagh Ata is Mount Kongur at a height of 7,719 meters. The highway passes right by the splendid Lake Karakul, set in a magnificent location between the peaks of Mustagh Ata and Kongur. We had seen this lake at its best in 2007 on our reverse journey to Tashkorgan when that day it was a brilliant azure blue. On journeys since the water level of the lake has been very low resulting in a disappointing rather tacky brown look to the water.

Not far from Lake Karakul Mohammad stopped his taxi to pick up a Chinese soldier, a thin serious young man in camouflage fatigues, no more than 20 year's old. A few kilometers further on, he picked up another passenger, this time a young female soldier, armed with nasty looking weaponry and a temper to match. Alan who had sat obligingly in the back seat to enable me to have a more comfortable ride and hopefully stop me being sicker than I was, complained to Mohammad that we had paid for a taxi for just the two of us.

Well, that of course was to no avail. After all, Mohammad did not speak any English and anyway, it appeared there was no way a Uighur taxi driver could refuse to provide Chinese soldiers with a ride. The three sat squashed in the back seat with our luggage and what appeared to be a large booty of rifles and military gear, the female soldier also complaining bitterly as she had the middle position right over a large central hump in the seat. Thankfully, I slept for the rest of the trip until we reached the police check point of Ghez.

If you are travelling along the Karakoram Highway between Tashkorgan and Kashgar, it is worth knowing that all foreigners must register at Ghez, a serious and heavily policed check post about two hours drive from Kashgar. It is not always clear what is expected of you, especially if you have a non-English speaking driver. And there is no-one to help. Drivers drop you off at the check post where you register at a teller like stand outside the main office, then pick you up on the other side. We have registered a number of times at the check post and each time the procedure has been different. The first time it was rather alarming to see our driver take off with all our luggage!

After Ghez, the highway forged through the burgundy, iron ore walled mountains of the Ghez River Gorge through pretty scenery dotted with willows and poplars onto Upal, a market village just an hour out of Kashgar.

The soldiers were dropped off at individual stops on the outskirts of Kashgar. Our female soldier friend however was not happy at where she was dropped and argued viciously and loudly with Mohammad. He looked at her passively, shrugged his shoulders and (obviously) told her to get out of the car. With a murderous face, she threw herself out and flounced down the road heavily laden with all her military gear and serious machine gun.

The fun began again when Mohammad tried to locate our hotel. Although we had stipulated to Sliman that it was the International Hotel near Renmin Square, poor Mohammad had no idea which hotel we wanted and took us to the well known Seman, then the Chinibagh Hotel. A good guess, as they are popular with tourists but luckily, we had visited Kashgar several times and had a reasonable idea of where we were going. But it was very difficult to explain, not having any language. We finally got there but it was far too late to cash any money at the Bank of China. It was all starting to sound too familiar. The very same thing had happened on our 2009 visit to Kashgar when we were unable to cash any money at all. Refer entry: "Cashless at Kashgar", Painted Faces of the Silk Road, Travelpod 2009.

Mohammad was an honest man. He charged us exactly what we had agreed upon with Sliman and even tried to carry our bags into the hotel. We bade him a fond farewell. Despite our inititial apprehensions, he had re-inforced our expectations of the honesty we had always found with Chinese people. And once we found out about the new traffic speed restrictions imposed by the Chinese government we could well understand our frequent stops and slow motion travel. We did not however work out what happened with our friend Sliman. It was probably as simple as he had found his friend was travelling to Kashgar and could do with some passengers, saving his little Suzuki from the long trip there and back, with just one forward load of people.

The entire journey from Tashkorgan to Kashgar is both spectacular and very pleasant, if on this occasion rather slow. It is worth noting also that the road is often closed in winter when most of Tashkorgan shuts down and the hotels close.

To our delight the International Hotel had improved markedly from when we were there in 2009. The staff was friendly, polite and spoke good English. And our room was very pleasant, overlooking the spacious Renmin Park. Looking out of our window we saw the same very heavy police presense that we had seen in 2009. In fact there appeared to be more police than people. All evidence of course of the continual underlying - and often not so underlying - tensions between the Uighur peoples and the Chinese authorities.

But again, we were delighted to be back in the exotic frontier city of Kashgar and were looking forward to exploring more of the old town and markets the next day with our guide Abdulrahman from Silk Road Adventure, whose services we had used on our last travels.

After several hours sleep I was beginning to feel human again and with Alan's encouragement that I should eat, we made our way to the hotel restaurant for dinner. We would normally have eaten at the wonderful Intizar Restaurant, famous for its fabulous Uighur cuisine and lively atmosphere. But this night, I could barely bring myself to walk to the hotel restaurant. A great pity as we love Intizar and would highly recommend it as a great place to eat and enjoy the company of the local Uighur people. We particularly like their mutton dishes and have included at the end of this entry my interpretation of their specialty Xinjiang Mutton that we enjoyed so much on previous visits to Kashgar.

We heard the restaurant before we saw it. Large red clothed round tables covered in left over food and jam packed with raucous, drunk, smoking business men greeted us. While we sat up in an elevated part of the restaurant we were amused to see what looked awfully familiar. Lengthy speeches were applauded loudly and toasted as many time as possible. It reminded us very much of our days at the many Chinese, Korean and Japanese business dinners we had attended in our former working lives. And in a similar fashion, the last toast was made by the obviously most senior man and suddenly the dinner was over and everyone disappeared. It was much to our relief, although it was all very entertaining - for a while.

We enjoyed a very pleasant meal of soup and a Uighur specialty of eggplant and tomatoes. We stopped however at the sight of a large fatty white piece of mutton flap flopping in a large bowl of clear greasy broth. We had found our usual liquor shop, not far from the hotel and managed to buy a bottle of scotch and some beer. It was lovely to be back in our room, have a quiet drink and then a very early night.


* Later in our travels through Xinjiang we learnt that the Chinese government had recently imposed extremely strict speed limits on Xinjiang roads; even highway speeds could be reduced for no apparent reason down to as low as 20 kilometers an hour. And there was no way drivers could take risks. Speed cameras were everywhere and often ones that averaged speed times. On other occasions, drivers were given designated times to reach their destinations. It was a particularly frustrating situation.



 My Recipe for Slow Baked Xinjiang Mutton

This is as close as I can make to some Uighur mutton dishes that we enjoyed at the Intizar Restaurant in Kashgar. I make this recipe the day before to allow for de-fatting the casserole.

Ingredients:

A leg of mutton or lamb
Two tbsp cumin freshly roasted and ground
One tbsp dried oregano
One tsp turmeric or saffron
Half a tsp Chinese five spice powder
Black pepper and sea salt
Two large vine ripened tomatoes
Two brown onions
One or two eggplants, thickly sliced
Some waxy potatoes (optional)
Chicken stock
Olive oil

How to:

Remove excess fat from mutton and brown well in a little oil in a heavy casserole dish either in the oven at 200 degrees or on top of the stove. Blot up excess fat rendered but try not to blot up to much of the crusty bits.

Reduce oven temperature (if necessary) to 150 degrees C.

Rub mutton with a mixture of ground cumin, five spice powder, turmeric, dried oregano and the pepper and salt. You do need quite a bit of salt to release the mutton juices. Top with thickly sliced onions and tomatoes, and some chicken stock just to keep it moist and form a sauce. Cover closely with scrunched up baking paper to reduce evaporation and top with a heavy lid or foil. Seal well.

Cook for 3 – 3 1/2 hours, turning occasionally. I have cooked this for 5 hours all up and the meat still remains moist and intact. You may need to top up with a little more stock but the mutton, vegetables and stock should provide enough moisture. The trick is to cook it very slowly in its own juices – it is a sofrito.

About half an hour before the end of the cooking time, add the eggplant. I sometimes add some thickly sliced semi cooked waxy potatoes too.

I leave the meat to cool thoroughly in the stock then refrigerate overnight. This way you can remove the excess rendered fat from the top of the stock.

In Kashgar we had this dish on a huge piece of well buttered flat bread. It was simply delicious. I don’t think they did the de-fatting bit which is probably why it tasted so good.