Kashgar to Naryn via Torughat pass

            “One night, when the Chinese were yarning, the talk turned on the Mohammedans.  Someone said that their holy city was farther west of Turkestan than Turkestan was west of Peking, and that it was walled with brass.  Ch’ing Ch’eng Li, who had spoken Turki from his childhood, looked up from the lamp where he was preparing opium.  “Yes,” he said, “I have heard the Turbaned-Heads speak of it.  It is called Roum.”  With the hearing of that name, which is current throughout Central Asia for Constantinople, I knew that I was well beyond the Great Wall of China…”

Owen Lattimore, “Pastures of the Caravans”, in The Desert Road to Turkestan, 1929.

            This is where we were, far away from the Palace of Holy Harmonius Divine Harmony and the precision of the Middle Kingdom.  We were halfway to Rum.  Today captured the experience of our antecedent Silk-Roaders perhaps better than any other.  Well…at least the closest that feeling can be captured today while still having all the cold water you want, going over a 12,000 foot mountain pass without breaking a sweat and have less than a 10% chance of getting shot at or sold into slavery.

We left Chini-Bagh that morning, the former British embassy and hissing hive of Great Game activity (though I am sure that Lady MacCartney had less problem with her bath than we did) and tried our best to dump our Yuan at the gift shop of what turned out to be the former Russian Embassy.  Here they are now, lifeless and plastic, a five-minute minibus ride apart, looking glumly at a more exciting past.  Well, I have news for them.  Help is on the way!  Your little town will stretch out of its Bixby outfit into the monster sitting at the crossroads of history.  And thanks for the towel.

The road out of Kashgar was beautiful.  My ears were still ringing from the cacophony of the bazaar on Sunday.  That was the most exotic place I have ever walked.  The collective ass was also a bit tender from the previous day’s long ride to KaraKol, towards Afghanistan and the Tashkorghani people.    Good driver.  

Our first real stop on the way north was to “check out” of China.  The matters were handled very simply at a large immigration and customs office.  There really was no one else there except for us.  And about 2 inches of standing water concentrated around our feet.  We had arrived just in time for cleaning day.  Following that was a nice corridor out of China, climbing some decent roads (how much we would appreciate these shortly).  Up up and away towards the Torughat pass.  (Farsi “To ru” roughly means “in the road” and “ghat” means to “cut” or “block”…whether or not that has anything to do with the name, I have no idea.)  We said goodbye to Abdul, our Kashgar guide and Elham our driver.  What a reception we received.  The Kyrgyz and Chinese delegations were “opening the border” with a band and pictures and guns.  Here is a view from Kyrgyzstan looking back into China.  I was a bit out of breath at > 4,000 m.  

The Kyrgyz team was waiting (well, had been waiting for 4 hours or so) and greeted us as we carried our bags out of the PRC into Kyrgyzstan.  Every direction we gazed out at featured snow-capped mountains with green meadows and rock formations.  Those of us who were enjoying the view really got our money’s worth as our drivers elected to conduct our transport at roughly 5 miles an hour for the next 6 hours.  No kidding.  The scenery was glorious but the road itself was a bit bumpy.

  

Speaking of bumpy: another border, another Meli moment.  Miss Patty (clearly an Al-Qaeda operative) didn’t have permission to enter Kyrgyzstan until the following day due to a visa screw-up.  Meli, of course, stood by her side as the issues were worked out.  There was no help coming from Bishkek or Naryn.  Night was falling and the idea of jailing this sweet woman (who happened to be 72 years old) didn’t sit well with the border guards.  To their credit, their behavior was, by report, exemplary.  They got a kick out of the fact that I had a picture of their remote 2.5 mile high checkpoint in my Lonely Planet guide.  It is in yours, too.  Apparently one of the requirements for Patty’s release was the signing of a note documenting her good treatment while in their “custody”. 

Now whole again, our troop began a somewhat unpleasant yet paradoxically the most serene evening of our trip.  The Silk Road here was anything but smooth but really, it did not matter.  We were alone.  We were a million miles from anywhere.  I had been reading Owen Lattimore’s account that morning.  It resonated with me, going home by this precious thread laid out before our feet, tied to the East at one end, sticky with history and life and death and greed, the other end tied to home and the West and my future.
          “…The force of old memories revived had set me dreaming again, through a wonderful evening, out in front of the caravan in the dusk, the moonlight, and the starlight.  I balanced for the first time all the contrasts of the bastard treaty-port life; Tientsin, Peking, Pei-tai Ho, with Kuei-hua and the first glorious reconnoitring that my wife and I shared of the borderland behind the Kuei-hua hills; and then this drifting life of the caravans.  The feeling bore down on me like a wave that I was a long way off and going farther; that I had been in China so long that I had lost the feeling of Home, but that I was going Home all across Asia, by roads that men had traveled before sea roads were known.  The camels and the long road, with glimpses, before the fulfillment of an old ambition, but they became suddenly tinged with the emotion of a new dream…”
                       Owen Lattimore, “Over the borders of Alashan” in The Desert Road to Turkestan, 1929.

At dusk I saw some movements on the rocks.  A bandit with a Jezail? A hallucination? Instead, it was a group of Ibex moving around on the rocks with the ease of sea lions in a show.  We had some dust in the bus over these slow, old roads.  It got bad at times but the mood was peaceful, appreciative of the uniqueness and remoteness of this experience. 

We played some games and our hosts sang some songs.  Both Phil and I said that Dr. Zhivago was our favorite movie.  I can’t remember all of them but they included Spartacus, The Scarlet Pimpernel,  The Big Lebowski, Groundhog Day, Shawshank Redemption, and many others.   In writing this, these moments seemed pedestrian and earthly for this special evening but I sense that this was reminiscent of the experience of our heartier predecessors.  What the hell else would they talk about for 3 months on the road?  Which oasis had the sweetest water?  The finest salt?  The most accommodating prostitutes?  This is life on the road, even tucked away on an air-conditioned bus.
What is the future here?  Energy and China and Islam and Russia and deals and hunger and hope and the CIA and who knows.  More of our fellow beautiful Americans will know the names of Bishkek and Alma Ata in time, either by news flurries or cooperation or abuse.  It is a difficult task, this gallon of gas.

The road improved and we arrived in Naryn after midnight.  Shab behkher, bahcheh’ha, shab behkher….

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