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 7: Shache - The Edge of Nowhere
May 19, 2008
In Shache, there is sand in the streets, and dust absolutely everywhere. China feels as far away as America, in this real Central Asian town. We ate last night in a Chinese restaurant near the hotel, and even the "Chinese" dishes are taking on a definite Central Asian feel. One very popular feature of Uighur cooking is a flavor known in Chinese as "ma." I don't know an English word that describes this sensation; it usually comes with "la" which is spicy, and the "ma" comes from a teeny peppercorn, inside an opened-up hull that looks like a hard cardamom. The addition of "ma" flavor makes food... well... tingly. Sort of an electric sensation on the tongue and roof of the mouth. This is definitely not a flavor that is limited to the four standbys, sweet, salty, bitter and sour. Instead, this makes the entire mouth feel different. Quite a sensation by itself, it also seems to open the senses to the other flavors in the dish; so the hot becomes hotter, the garlic more fragrant, the sauce more savory. A unique experience, not to be missed.
The reason we came to Shache was to see the desert, and to do that we had about a half hour drive followed by a long walk down an arbored road. Small houses with gardens (or very small farm plots) lined the road to the desert, and then suddenly, that was it. The desert started at the end of the road. The farm plots ended, the trees ended, there was a small buffer zone of scrub, and then full sandy desert, with dunes not that distant. The group got on board camels here for a "walk-along" camel ride up and over the dune ridge to see the vista of the Taklamakan Desert. I sipped tea in the shade of a large open-side yurt and watched a very angry camel kick around in a camel pen. I'm not sure if he was riled because no one was riding him, or if no one was riding him as a safety precaution; the way he snorted, pawed and periodically went into a bucking bronco routine, I feel it was probably the latter. Some clients said they wanted something a bit more adventurous than a walk-along camel ride, but I don't think even the bravest would have wanted anything to do with this beast.
The road back to Kashgar was long but we had time to see some of the traditional craftsmen in the old town on our return - blacksmiths, coppersmiths and so on. It's funny: after Shache, Kashgar seems like quite a modern city, and the hotel here has gone up several notches in everyone's estimation. The large lobby with its black marble floor and its small lobby bar in the corner, feel like returning to the oases of old after the camel trek in Yerkent's desert.
Photos from this leg of the tour:
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