Arriving in Kashgar after pedalling a 115km-long leg, we were exhausted and hungry. The first thing we did after checking in at Radisson Hotel was to take a frenzied shower, followed by a much-needed laundry session. Having been camping in the boondocks, the sheer luxury of the hotel had a somewhat soporific effect -- and the next thing we knew, it was breakfast time the following day!

Mamat Tudajim, a young guide, turned up on time to take us around the city’s few remaining historical places. Some years ago, the Chinese government had started a modernisation drive, demolishing much of the old city, and with it, centuries of heritage.

Of what remains, Mamat chose the Afaq Khawaja (corrupted to Apak Hoja) tomb complex, for a start of the tour. A 17^th century religious Sufi leader, Khawaja was also involved in power struggles and ruled ‘Kashgaria’ some years before his death. His massive tomb includes 72 graves of his relatives, alongside a commoners’ cemetery that is still functional. The complex also includes a mosque with ornately carved wooden pillars and a beautifully painted ceiling of wooden rafters.

Next to the mosque is a defunct madrassah, an institution that has been officially made to go into disuse in Xinjiang, as it is seen to breed religious extremism. There being no forum for Islamic studies for children, it is left to the parents to impart whatever little they can, at home.

A visit to China’s largest Idgar Mosque was instructive in many ways. The entrance portal of the 15^th century mosque is a well-preserved imposing structure, while the inside of the mosque is equally impressive. We learnt that all mosques in China are open for only half an hour before and after prayers. Azaan is a low decibel affair, and the Friday khutba by state-appointed imams is strictly state-controlled.

An interesting feature of the biannual eid prayers is that women distribute sweets, and sing and dance outside the mosque to welcome their men after the supplications are over.

Traditionally, Uyghur women do not enter mosques for prayers, unlike in most Islamic countries.

The nearby Grand Bazaar is a covered market for cheap home wares, spices, cosmetics, fabrics and footwear, much like our Anarkali and Bohri Bazaar. Every night the area outside the Grand Bazaar turns into one large open-air food bazaar, where a choice of sesame-studded lamb skewers, laghman noodles, naans, soups, and ice creams are on offer at cheap prices. Irresistibly, we sampled several items that were comically ordered in sign language, much to the amusement of the friendly vendors.

To us, it seemed, Kashgar housewives seldom cook dinners, and families love to eat out regularly.

Kashgar’s old town is a crumbling quarter that has a few stubborn residents who are not ready to move out to the steel and glass structures of the modern city. A motley of antique shops, an odd pottery maker here, a sweetmeats seller there, all hark back to times long gone.

The tour of the old town was followed by a hearty lunch at Altun Orda, an upscale restaurant that starkly highlighted how Kashgar has modernised.

Next morning I took a short bicycle ride to the city parks. A noteworthy feature of the outing was an admirable street side music performance, in which a trio played the naghra (kettle drums) and sunay (a kind of traditional oboe). I thought a memory of Kashgar could not be better evoked, than by listening to that bewitching Uyghur music. 

Police encounter at Yengisar

After Kashgar, our next destination was Yengisar, a neat little town famous for manufacturing knives and daggers. Though we had planned to camp for the night, the sight of Oriental Holiday Hotel was too tempting to pass up. So we decided to give ourselves a well-earned break after a hard day on the road.

While Shahid amused a group of children who had gathered to see our fancy bikes, I went inside the lobby to check in. As I was going through the process, I heard a wailing siren, followed by a police car halting in front of the hotel, with red and blue flashers lighting up the night. As I joined Shahid to see what had happened, four black-clad armed policemen emerged, and heading towards us, demanded to see our passports.

While they were scrutinising the documents, another patrol car screeched to a halt in front of the hotel, with four more menacing policemen joining the earlier ones.

After a lot of discussion on walkie-talkies with their superiors, they turned to us, and in broken English, told us to leave the hotel. Unable to converse and find out the reason, we decided to leave, but not before trying the military card. As they all jumbled around to see our ex-military identification papers, we saw their expressions change, and a salute or two followed.

Another flurry of calls on the walkie-talkies followed, and to our surprise, yet another police car arrived with some senior functionary, to take stock of the situation. The newcomer was briefed, but he seemed unable to take a decision, while we fretted what the hullabaloo was about.

We could not believe when a fourth police car arrived at what seemed like a big crime scene, with scores of curious locals watching from a distance. The latest arrival, apparently the superintendent of police, got into a discussion with the hotel manager, without any outcome.

By now we were quite fed up, and decided to leave anyway. As we collected ourselves to go, the hotel manager suddenly handed me his cell phone, and told me to speak on. A lady on the other end (probably an interpreter) surprised me in passable English, that the police chief wishes to apologise for the confusion, and that we can stay at the hotel.

So after a ten-versus-two bout, we had incredibly won!

The next morning that we saw scores of Han Chinese VIPs emerging from the hotel, leaving for some business. That is when we figured out that their security had been of utmost concern to the police, for Yengisar had been the scene of some vicious knife attacks in the recent past. An evening out in Yengisar’s food street attested to the tight security. 

On to Yarkand

After a day of biking in unremarkable scenery, and camping by the roadside poplar plantation for the night, we started early for Yarkand. Drifting sand from Taklamakan Desert blew all the way, but as a welcome tailwind. The Yarkand oasis is spread well over 100km along the highway, and stretches up to the city of Karghilik. Endless orchards of walnuts, apricots, peaches and watermelons fed by the gushing Yarkand River, could be seen all around.

By afternoon we were in Yarkand, but it took us quite a while to locate Super-8 Hotel. Every passer-by or taxi driver that we asked gestured in the negative.  Having biked around much of the city, and quite fed up by then, we inquired from a policewoman who readily pointed at a tall building a mere 100 metres from us. "Suba It," she replied stridently, almost implying as if we had faulty peepers. If only we had got our pronunciation right, we mused!

Yarkand city has a distinct, well-laid out modern half on the western side, and a congested, old eastern half. The proportion of Han Chinese in Yarkand appeared more than what we saw in Kashgar, perhaps a quarter of the population. The mutual loathing of Uyghurs and the Han Chinese was obvious, as the former do not seem too happy about the changing demographics. One could feel a palpable tension in the city streets due to a heavy police presence.

The next day we went down to the Palace Complex and Cemetery of the Yarkand Khans who ruled between 1514-1705. The complex had survived the fury of the Red Guards during the Cultural Revolution, and remains the only worthwhile heritage site of the city. The beautiful blue-and-beige tiled façade of the recently renovated palace was all that could be seen from afar, as the palace is not yet open to the public. The nearby Altun Mosque is badly in need of restoration, though some work was underway on its entrance portal.

The tombs of the Khans lie next to the mosque in a serene arboreal setting. Outside the Khan’s cemetery compound lies the tomb of Aman-un-Nisa Khan, the wife of one of the rulers, and a poetess and musician in her own right. Many old Uyghur men and women had gathered at the tombs, in a daily ritual to seek benedictions from the dead Khans who are revered as saints.

Our travel travails

From Yarkand we set course for Karghilik, where we had planned to camp for the night. After a day-long ride, along the orchard-lined highway, we found a plantation next to a stream on the suburbs of the city, which fulfilled all the requirements of a good campsite. After setting up camp, I was gathering the loose articles when suddenly, I picked up the sound of gushing water.

Horrified to see a huge flood heading towards our campsite, I shouted to Shahid that we had only a couple of minutes to do something about it. Our tents were just a few feet from being washed away, so the first thought was to quickly shift camp.

However, there was no suitable place nearby, and the only option was to somehow divert the flood by breaching an embankment.

Without any tools, we frantically started to dig with our bare hands, and in a few minutes had opened up a sizeable opening through which the water started to flow into an adjacent plot.  In no time, the pressure of water had widened the breach, and we were much relieved to see it inundating the adjoining plantation while we were on dry land.

We later found out that the spillways of a canal had been opened for irrigation of the roadside poplars, and we just happened to be at the wrong place, at the wrong time.

No harm done by the flood, we were able to ride out next morning -- only to discover a puncture each, probably after having picked up some thorns at the campsite. Repair was done and we continued with the ride in a blazing sun.

The next campsite was in a thicket of bushes strewn with pebbles, as a result of which we had an uncomfortable and restless night.

As we were having coffee for breakfast, we both spotted flat tyres, and went through the repair operation that we had become quite adept at by then. Unfortunately, it turned out to be a very bad start, and by midday, we had had four more punctures. Each repair taking about half an hour, we had been set back by three hours, and there was no way we could reach the next oasis destination by nightfall.

Caught in the middle of the Taklamakan Desert, we had to spend the night on the dunes, without dinner.

At around 10pm, I heard a strange whistling sound followed by a strong gust of wind. Peeping out from my tent, I could see nothing but sand in the air. In a few minutes we found ourselves in the midst of a fierce sandstorm, and the outer flies of our tents flew off like kites. Both Shahid and I ran after the flysheets like hobbled camels struggling to trot in soft sand. When we finally caught the flies and turned back to fix them on the tents, we were dismayed to find that the tents had collapsed and had rolled off in the dunes. The rest of the night was spent awake, virtually exposed to barrels of sand pouring from the skies.

Tired, hungry and grimy, we packed what remained of our tents, and rode off in a huff at first light.

Though two legs remained to get to our final destination of Hotan, Shahid wisely decided that we ought to cover two days’ distance in a single day, if we were to avoid another night on the dunes. Aided by a tailwind but tortured by a fierce sun, we had to brave three more punctures. Despite replacement of the inner tubes with spare ones, we had to continually inflate the tyres due to faulty valves.

We were luckily saved the ignominy of arriving in Hotan on a rented pick-up after all the effort that we had put in over the weeks. 

Hotan finally

By the time we pedalled into Hotan, we looked like haggard, emaciated and cruelly sunburnt figures that had arrived with some medieval camel caravan. Twelve hours on the saddle, we had completed the longest leg of 120km in one day. We had also reached our expedition target of cycling for 1,000km!

As we entered downtown Hotan, we caught sight of the towering statues of Chairman Mao Zedong meeting a local farmer Kurban Tulum, which mark the Unity Square. Kurban’s love for Mao led him to trot across on his donkey, all the way to Beijing, where he was given an audience by the Chairman. Today, Kurban is immortalised for his madcap venture, which is interpreted as an effort at unifying the Uyghurs and the Han Chinese.

Next to the Unity Square is a huge golden dome, which at first sight seems like the dome of a mosque. A sign of changing times, it is a temple indeed, but not of faith, but that of commerce -- the city’s biggest shopping mall.

Hotan has changed immensely from a dusty, sleepy town of the 1960s that PAF pilots recall, when they first ferried Chinese fighters to Pakistan. Much like Kashgar and Yarkand, it has turned into a city of concrete and glass built over the debris of mud brick villages. The old quarter of Hotan now consists of just a few streets and narrow alleys, where the bulldozers could arrive any time.

Qurban Jan, a tour guide, at our Yudu Hotel took us for a tour of some traditional crafts, including a mulberry bark paper factory, a watermill, a silk spinning and weaving factory, and a hand-woven carpet factory. These dying arts and crafts are popular with western tourists, essentially, though we tolerated the tour as a reasonable pastime.

In the evening we walked down an old street, sampling sweet watermelons from Hotan’s vast fruit orchards fed by the Karakax and White Jade rivers.

Later at night, we took a round of Unity Square to watch groups of Han Chinese who regularly congregate for openair ballroom dancing and tai chi, a martial arts discipline that is supposed to increase longevity.

We were lucky to find Medina Restaurant run by a Pakistani, and were spared the routine fare of laghman noodles that the Uyghurs love so much.

The time had come for winding up our cycling tour, so we disposed our bikes, gifting one to Qurban and the other to Mamat of Kashgar, who would collect it later. We purchased bus tickets for Kuqa, from where we were to go by train to Urumqi and then leave for Islamabad by air.

What remained with us were memories of the wonderful Uyghurs, a genetic bridge between East Asia and West Asia. Their colourful dresses contrast with their simple lifestyle, their Turkic Uyghur language vies with Mandarin for a place in the world ethnologue, and their Islamic faith survives in a sea of material culture. Our cycling trip, besides being an extreme physical challenge for two 62-year olds, was also a fruitful study in ethnography and nature, in a beautiful part of China.

(Concluded)