Postcard from the Silk Road to Kashgar

We left Chengdu a day later than we had planned since we missed the train by 5 minutes the first time and had to reschedule the trip for the following day. The following 3 days and two nights involved a lot of sitting on a train bed and reading or sitting or sleeping or not a whole lot of doing anything. We eventually arrived in Urumqi which is the most landlocked city in the whole world which means is it is the farthest from any ocean. After we arrived we grabbed a quick bite to eat and headed to the bus station for Kashgar. We took the 24 hour bus to Kashgar which meant we had been traveling for 4 days and 3 nights STRAIGHT! The road to Kashgar is the famous Silk Road which is a whole lot less cool than it sounds. Maybe part of the reason I say that is because we very exhaustedly saw it from a bus on the last leg of the journey. Anyways, imagine a vast expanse of flat dirt with an occasional bush and every 50 miles or so there is an oasis with tall stately poplar trees and square chinese buildings and you have a good idea of what it looks like. Also along the road is the second lowest point in the world after Death Valley. Quite a change after being in Tibet the week before and heading into the mountains of central asia next week. Eventually we arrived in Kashgar and crashed in the hotel after showering. The bed felt great since it wasn't slightly smaller than my body and constantly bouncing around all night. We experienced a little "train" lag the morning on the bus since we stopped for breakfast and we thought it was like 3 in the morning. Turns out it was 8 and the sun hadn't even started to come up. We had traveled so far in a couple days that the sun had changed by about 4 hours! The time was still the same since all of china runs off of Beijing time. The sun rises at about 9 and sets around 9 in the evening. Really strange for us. Turns out also that we are still in the fasting month of Ramadhan here. We thought we were going to miss it but didn't.

Tomorrow the plan is to leave for Kyrgyzstan after exploring Kashgar today. More to come later.