Well, it’s been a long time, too long and I am going to once again backdate this post so it looks like I am not that lazy about my blogging.

So where to start. We hired the taxi driver that we met the night before and kidnapped him for the day. He drove us all the way out to Karakul Lake as requested and by god, it was worth it. He could speak Mandarin and Uighur, although being Han. Got up early in the morning and raced down to a military office to get permits to go where we wanted.. turns out it is a military-controlled area.

Long, long, long drive with stops along the way at worse and worse bathrooms and bagels, 馕, and 哈密瓜 for snacks. It got pretty remote, lots of nothing on a glacial plain covered with well-worn rocks left over from the last Ice Age and mountain streams running down the side. Salt Marshes, Glaciers, Sand Mountains, and finally the lake. We warmed up in a Yurt and our guide managed to get us in on a single ticket (saving us 50 kuai). We also got a “deal” for horses.

Ah yes, the horses, but I will tell that story in a bit. We rode around the lake until the cold and the wind forced us into a Yurt where we ate more 馕 and had Yak Milk Tea. We paid 20 kuai for it, which was overpriced, but we didn’t think anything too much of it. There is no wood out in these parts and it is too remote for coal or gas… so, we found that all the heating is done by… well… dried poop that I was hoping was from the yaks and goats. I also had the misfortune of having to “use the facilities”. I was polite, asked where the crapper was and they kept pointing towards a hill. I hunted quite a bit until I discovered “it”. Just a designated area out the in the open. There’s a pic somewhere which I might upload someday. Well, when in Rome…

We had had enough and headed back to the main yurts to ditch the horses. The deal was 50 kuai an hour for the both of us. We showed up and they said it was 2 hours of riding and 50 per hour each. Um… 200 kuai, we did not have on us. I had about 90 on me and Jude had 10 left. We decided to wait a bit for our guide to wake up and see what we could do, because he was the one who brokered the original deal. Well, he was furious about the fact that we were charged 20 kuai by people who considered him a “local” and demanded we be paid back. He also made note of the fact that even taking into account the time we spent in the yurt and the time he was resting, we were barely over 90 minutes. Lots of yelling, lots of accusations and finally he pulled a knife, one of those Uighur knives of lore. The yelling stopped and we agreed to 120 minus the 20 that we had be charged by mistake. I got all Chinese and passed out the smokes and melon and hey, we’re all friends again.

Amazing really, knife fight out in the middle of nowhere with mountains and glaciers surrounding us. Still shocked that we didn’t die.

We started the journey back, saw the same things we saw on the way down in addition to some Pakistani trucks, got through the military checkpoint and made our way back to Kashgar for dinner.

Seeing as we were broke, it was time to stop at an ATM so we could pay the guy, weirdest thing was that it only gave out 50s instead of 100s. His rate was 400 for the day, I gave him an extra 50 because he was awesome. We also treated him to dinner as we promised and it was all good. He said he would take us to the airport in the morning too, which he did

If you are ever in Kashgar, I can recommend the best guide there is

Next, off to Urumqi.