Chapter 33

  The Silk Road

  Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Western China

  With wonderful memories of our trip to the western end of the Silk Road a few years ago in Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan, it is time to find out what lies along the eastern section, starting in Kazakhstan. Most of the country lies to the north of the Silk Road, but as the old capital, Almaty, lies just across the border from our real starting point in Kyrgyzstan, it was tempting to head here first.

  The decision had nothing to do with a recent ad from a Kazakh company called Chocotravel (or is it Shockotravel?) featuring naked flight attendants. A concerned resident, Ekatherina Eltsova, suggested the company might have hit ‘rock bottom’. No, seriously.

  N.B. Who knew? According to the Daily Mail (who else?), the first edible apples were grown in the Tian Shan mountains on the Kazakh-Chinese border and reached the west via the Silk Road. Our first stop, Almaty, derives its name from the Kazakh Alma-Ata or ‘fatherland of the apple’. Surprised Steve Jobs did not set up a factory here.

  All I knew about Kazakhstan was that it was one of the old Soviet republics in the USSR (until 1991), land-locked, the size of the whole of Western Europe (not quite true) and the ninth largest country in the world. Almaty, the capital until 1997, when the title moved to Astana, is located where Istanbul is located in Western Europe, that is in the far southeast, so it made sense to make the new capital more central.

  OK, big deal, but what makes Almaty so significant? Politically, historically, ideologically, geographically, geologically, one hell of a lot. Four of the nine world’s largest countries are within a few hundred miles from Almaty, it is where the Russian Bear meets the Chinese Dragon and, until India gained independence in 1947, the British Empire in India, and it is the eastern-most outpost of Islam in central Asia, though of the more benign variety.

  It is where the Eastern Orthodox Church meets not only Islam but also secular China and Buddhist Tibet, and Christian and Muslim buildings both have major landmarks in the city. It is multi-ethnic in its make-up, Kazakhs, Tajiks, Kyrgyzs, Uzbeks (all these from other Soviet republics) plus displaced Muslim Uyghurs from western China, repatriated Russians who were moved here to strengthen Russian control, Tartars forcibly moved from Ukraine, even Mennonite Germans repatriated a hundred years ago.

  So, in essence, this was the frontier town during what Kipling called ‘the great game’ when the British and the Russians slugged it out over control of India, which made it a major pressure point in global power struggles for more than a hundred years, so I guess this justifies spending a day or two here; oh, and it is a seismically active earthquake zone too, due to its proximity to the close snow-capped Tien Shan mountain range a few miles to the south forming the stunning backdrop to the city.

  Yes, that’s the history lesson but what’s it like? At present dry and autumnal after blistering hot summer days and the prospect of bitter winter days ahead, tree-lined streets for summer shade, numerous parks, the golden-domed Orthodox nail-less wooden Ascension Cathedral, churches and mosques, tower blocks from gracious to grim, and horrendous traffic and driving. A five-second lurch for a few feet of territory (probably like the battle of the Somme) and then a ninety-second wait at the next traffic lights to go green again.

  Culture ranges from opera and ballet, of course, to ubiquitous large TV screens hanging off trees and walls belting out semi pornographic MTV with gyrating semi-clad females and huge ugly ex-weightlifter types displayed all around the restaurant spoiling enjoyment of our breakfast porridge, well, that and the horses milk on offer in the buffet, which if you put it into your tea makes it look like Chinese egg-drop soup. I had not realised that the Kazakh expertise with horses included ‘dairy’ farmers and even chefs, but the evening menu specialises in horse, not to be missed, though pangs of guilt followed next day when the horse’s milk had disappeared from the buffet. Had we cooked the golden goose?

  Rather than take a flight to our next destination, Bishkek, (known as Frunze before 1991) in Kyrgyzstan, we opted to go by road and risk a lengthy land border crossing; at the outset mostly stationary, surrounded by ancient gas-guzzling clapped-out cars and trucks, but, eventually, thinning out into almost empty roads stretching to the flat horizon ahead. We skirted the foothills of the Tien Shan mountain range that separates the two countries across featureless steppes of scrubby grasslands dotted with isolated basic yurt-shaped dwellings, hill-top burial grounds with clusters of crenelated tombs like crusader outposts of yore, surrounded by occasional herds of horses, cattle or goats, right up to the border town where we met with the anticipated chaos of immigration and customs typical in ex-Soviet republics.

  They say border crossing was all a lot easier in the old unified days of the USSR. With uninformative signage, mostly in Russian of course, we queued with the locals until eventually being advised we should have gone to a side door marked with a ‘no trespassing’ sign. Self-evidently. There we met the only other foreigner who claimed he was Korean (South not North, or so he said). He claimed to have booked a last-minute holiday, very popular at present in Seoul during this heightened period of unease, any destination acceptable.

  Only an hour overall including dragging our suitcases across no man’s land between countries, a great improvement on the eight hours getting into Turkmenistan a few years ago. We were warned; everywhere signs said in English: Good Luck! They knew the odds of a smooth transition were not great.

  We have now been joined by the rest of the university group for the start of the official lecture and study tour to pick up the eastern end of the Silk Road towards western China.

  Initially, we follow arid mountain ranges on both sides of the valley east of Bishkek heading towards what was once one of the (many?) most dangerous parts of the Silk Road known as Ambush Gorge, where merchants and pilgrims who once travelled this northern route skirting the large Taklimakan desert, were prey to bandits. The name is still justified today as every bend in the road seems to hide a policeman with a radar detector; with varying road speed limits, they do a roaring trade.

  Today the route is an untidy conglomeration of single-storey dwellings with corrugated roofs with attached gardens of fruit trees, roadside yurts offering produce, accommodation or other services with looming sandy-coloured and treeless mountains providing the border with Kazakhstan 100 miles to the north.

  Everywhere there are signs of ancient civilisations, like the ancient ninth century settlement of Balasagun with its partially destroyed minaret, mausoleums, grave markers, as well as the nearby UNESCO Lake Issyk Kul, site of petroglyphs carved into 5,000 rocks strewn across an area more than four thousand years ago, images of horses, horsemen, wolves, deer and rituals of pastoral peoples in ancient times that have survived a harsh climate in still recognisable forms.

  In Kyrgyzstan today, it seems that the first thing a local does when having a home built is to construct a three-sided boundary like the walls in a game of Mahjong. If there is actual building within the plot, it will be half-finished and looking like a junkyard. Status obviously comes only from your plot size.

  The night-stop is on the northern shore of the huge lake called Issyk-Kul nearly 200 kilometres long, 60 kilometres wide and up to 2,000 feet deep. We looked forward to a boat trip until advised that the Russians used (still use??) the lake as a torpedo testing site as presumably such an activity requires targets. The way the crew twisted around quite violently suggested that they might have been attempting to avoid anything skimming the waves towards them.

  Tomorrow we head south to freeze at almost 12,000 feet above sea level in conditions that Silk Road travellers, centuries before us, would have experienced. Little did the public of the time appreciate the challenges involved in getting bales of silk to Europe 500 years ago.

  The next step gave a real idea of life on the high mountain steppes separating Central Asia from western China. The road rose from 3,000 feet to 10,000, occasionally 12,000 feet with the inevitable impact on breathing, to sunlit uplands where the nomadic Kyrgyzs continue a way of life typical of tough animal herders in many of the Stans. Daily life involves moving their animals and yurt homes every so often to pastures new, across the grass plains in what is often bitterly cold (down to -54C), or sweltering summer temperatures and indeed we were to experience just a little of such a life that night. Herders’ living accommodation was provided by what seemed to be old railway carriages but were probably just decrepit-looking caravans usually painted blue/green stacked up on bricks. There are numerous myths about these nomadic people, including the belief that to grow cotton you had to bury a sheep the year before. I am glad I didn’t bring my sheepskin coat; you never know how good the locals’ eyesight is.

  Our overnight site consisted of half a dozen yurts, resembling from a distance, Indian wigwams in wagon train formation nestled up a remote ravine to provide our night’s rest though I use the word advisedly. Temperature was below freezing, and the stoves burnt out by midnight. Thermal clothing provided some respite but not to one’s extremities. Trekking across the uneven ground at 3 am to reach the ‘thunder-boxes’ was only relieved, so to speak, by the beauty of the luminous starry night sky and the rustle of animal life, presumably cattle or horses roaming nearby. For the record, all conveniences in this part of the world can be measured on a negative TripAdvisor scale: 0 to -5. Zero was bog standard of course. Local wildlife consisted mainly of marmots which it is now thought were the source of the Black Death because locals picked up flees wearing marmot fleeces and rubbing the animal flat on their chests to keep themselves healthy! The Silk Road facilitated transferring the plague to Europe, of course.

  ***

  After this invigorating experience, the rest of the day was less uplifting as we faced the challenge of crossing the border into western China at the Togurat Pass up at 12,000 feet. Processing twenty people required about seven hours, seven stops at different locations to repeat the same checks over and over. Part of the delay was due to the fact that we arrived just before lunchtime when the border closes, so as naturally border staff need a good three-hour lunch break after such rigorous work during which time nothing moves. Getting timing right is tricky because with a two-hour time difference between the countries, lunchtime lasts all day. Curiously, a kind of no man’s land then stretches for 100 kilometres from leaving the border before immigration. It would be like someone arriving at Dover but stamped into the UK in London. Things were even slower for truck drivers whose vehicles formed long queues in each direction with lower priority even than private traffic.

  Posters at immigration outline their mission statement: ‘Faster, more efficient’ among other stated objectives, so some way to go then. There is a feeling that the Han Chinese do not welcome visitors into this sensitive autonomous part of China and would rather that you just took a flight to Beijing and went to go and see the Great Wall instead. This is a hardship posting for the Hans, so they probably resent being in this remote (from Beijing) hostile environment.

  Kashgar, the first major city across the border is one of those magical names from history, largely because of its Silk Road association as well as its ancient Sunday livestock market, of which more later. Today ‘sinosisation’ of the wild-west frontier town where Russian influence meets Chinese power is well-advanced under the current government policy of moving in Han Chinese people to rebalance the pre-existing indigenous Uyghur ethnic population.

  This ‘modernisation’ programme has almost obliterated the character of the old city as original brown adobe buildings are replaced with concrete, leaving a rather touristified pedestrian area where craftsmen continue to ply their trades bashing out copper or making musical instruments. Visitors are mainly from eastern China and other westerners are thin on the ground. An occasional first floor highly decorated teahouse still provides refreshment to groups of old men with time on their hands as it must have done for Silk Road merchants centuries ago.

  The five-hundred-year-old Id Kah Mosque, located just off the city’s central square, is the largest mosque in China, providing a haven of peace within its precinct walls and lined with silver poplar trees because this is, of course, essentially a Muslim city.

  Nearby, the partly covered bazaar is as usual the centre of daily trade in items from everyday utensils to Asian rugs but with one significant difference: an ubiquitous military and police presence, on every street corner or sitting in blacked-out police vans every 500 metres in all major streets with flashing red and blue lights. Disturbances some years ago suggest that there is a significant security issue here still.

  The image of swarms of bicycles is now very out of date as almost all traffic is now motorised with completely silent electric Vespa-type scooters, so extreme caution is strongly advised for pedestrians crossing the road.

  Apart from Friday prayers, the other big day of the week is Sunday when thousands head out of town for the livestock market so if you’re in the market for another bull, cow, sheep, goat, yak, camel or donkey, this is where the action is. Outlying roads are clogged with mopeds, motorised tractors or open top trucks stuffed, and I mean stuffed with depressed-looking beasts who clearly do not enjoy seeing their antecedents hanging up naked in roadside butchers around the site. A row of a dozen blooded goats’ heads lined up on the ground at the entrance made a particularly gory sight.

  Grizzled dealers clutching large wads of notes barter hard for a sale or purchase which often involves a middleman if negotiation flounders. From the outside the whole process looks utterly chaotic as vehicles are parked untidily and animals are heaved into trucks without much dignity amid pools of mud churned up with animal urine. This is not a scene for those with a sensitive disposition.

  ***

  A two-hour flight north up towards the Mongolian border and the oasis desert town of Turpan, which despite being one of the hottest and driest places on earth with ground temperatures up to 50C, has sustained life for thousands of years thanks to the water running down from the nearby Flaming Mountain range to the north. The site is like that of Las Vegas neon in the desert but without the gambling or shows.

  Today it is known throughout China as a major grape growing region, but there are everywhere still manifestations of their Buddhist ancestors from the first century AD, before Islam came to dominate this region. The deserted tenth century city of Gochang once accommodated 30,000 people at the foothills of the nearby blistering aforementioned Flaming Mountain range. The adobe partial outer town walls still stand in recognisable form, though they were pillaged by local farmers and others for many years to support their crop growing.

  It is difficult to imagine much has changed in the village streets nearby, where old men lounge about outdoors on their beds under shady trees to avoid the midday temperature of 40 C, dilapidated bits of machinery or furniture lay strewn outside crumbling homes or barns where not much stirs in the torpid heat.

  We are wending our way towards the ancient Astana cemetery where residents of Gochang were interred between the 4th and 8th centuries. A few of the thousand odd tombs have been excavated, one or two of which we are about to explore. Access to each tomb is via a downward-sloping narrow passageway with steep metre-high walls leading to an antechamber where bodies once la Behind where the body is lies, the wall images chosen by the deceased many years in advance of their demise are displayed, illustrating their past lives. A large dome of earth was built over the tomb when the entrance was closed to assist identification, should access be needed for other family members, though this would, of course, have helped grave robbers looking for valuables like coins inserted into all the body’s orifices when being prepared for burial. One site still holds two mummies whose condition has been amazingly well preserved by the dry conditions of the area.

  Further into the barren redstone Flaming Mountain range the ancient ‘Bezeklik Thousand Buddha Caves’ overlook a green oasis along the river below, which would have given life to the town of Gochang mentioned above in its heyday. The grottos built between the 5th and 14th centuries into the mountainside, partially protrude or sit flush to the mountainside. In barrel-shaped rooms about twenty feet long walls on each side are covered with Buddhist images in varying states of disrepair. The colours are often still quite fresh though lead-based red has, over time, reverted to black. Many have had the eyes gouged out or damaged by those who wished to prevent the Buddhist faith being further promulgated.

  Even more interesting and better preserved is the Jiaohe island site from the second century BC, a UNESCO site outside Turpan. Early tribes dug down into the softish soil to create a treeless city for up to 6,000 inhabitants to include living space, pagodas, stupas and steep-sided passageways for protection against the blistering sun. Water from the two rivers which surround the site were crucial for human existence and advanced techniques were employed all over the city to bring glacial waters from the Tien Shan mountains 3,000 metres away to the Karen underground water channel system. It is partially open to visitors and indeed it is the first time we have encountered Chinese tourists en masse, flags, selfies, pushing and shoving, shouting, the works.

  Here’s hoping there not all on our overnight train tonight heading for the Buddhist caves of Dunhuang.

  ***

  The small town of Dunhuang in Gansu province was a pivotal point for Silk Road travellers where the north and south winter and summer routes from the west join up after crossing the Taklamakan desert; this was always going to be the outstanding site on our route. It lies just inside China proper, beyond the vast Jinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region in the Hexi Corridor separating Mongolia to the north and Tibet to the south. We, however, reached it by overnight train (railway not camel) from Turpan, though I am not sure which option would have been the least comfortable.

  Initially, the landscape, dominated by what seemed to be heaps of broken black rock turned more scrub-like until quite suddenly short sections of the western end of the Great Wall came into view with nothing to indicate its significance, no signs, no photo-stop lay-by, zilch.