MIR Corporation's Travel Blog:
Chinese Turkestan & Central Asia
Andrew Barron, MIR's Director of Scheduled Group Tours, visits the ancient Silk Road in Western China and the 'Stans with the Chinese Turkestan & Central Asia scheduled group tour. Read about his journey from Almaty to Urumqi, Kashgar and Bishkek. 
Day 5: Urumqi, flight to Kashgar - Hints of What's To Come
May 17, 2008
Urumqi, like any big Chinese city is paved, noisy, buzzing with construction and for all the foreign writing and new sights and smells, very familiar. There are highlights, but it is not an exotic town by any measure. What is interesting about it though, as was the case with Almaty, was the mix of ethnicities. I've been to eastern and Central China a number of times, and always found a homogeneous population. Urumqi is different and has a very ethnically mixed population. It felt to me like the way I imagine Silk Road jumping-off points of old. There were ethnic Chinese, of course, but also Uighurs, Kazakhs, Mongolians, Russians, and other Central Asians. Though the architecture and setting were very Chinese, it had that "edge of the empire" feel. This was heightened by knowing we were headed to remote Kashgar tonight, the first of our true Silk Road oasis stops.
We visited Red Hill Park, where people-watching was definitely the highlight, and saw a pagoda around which is a fence festooned with locks. These are placed by couples as a sign of love, and the effect of thousands of locks was a fairly strong one. We also visited the bazaar, which has largely been sterilized and feels more like a shopping complex than anything else. Hints of authenticity poked through though, from the hand-shaved ice fruit drinks to the young Uighur kids causing a ruckus. In my opinion, Urumqi is best seen as an appetizer for the main course down the road.
We caught an evening flight to Kashgar and arrived late at the small airport, transferring to our hotel for the night.
Photos from this leg of the tour:
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