Last Day in Kashgar

For our last day in Kashgar, Matt and I decided to rent bicycles and ride our bikes through the city and into the Uyghur suburbs. Originally, we were going to hire a car to take us up to Karakul Lake, which is supposed to be amazingly scenic and you can stya in yurts with local people. In the end, we decided to rent the bikes instead because the drive to Karakul Lake is 2 hours each way, and we didn't have enough time to spend the night there. So, that would be 4 hours of driving in one day! I couldn't handle that...

The bikes ended up to be a lot of fun. We could go pretty far but were more independent than we would have been with a taxi. First we stopped at Abakh Hoja Tomb. It was very pretty, all blue and green tiles, and it reminded me of California. There were two workers there that could speak very good English and they were interesting to talk to. One of the was telling us all about the minorities in China. The Uyghurs are the biggest minority in China, and all the other minorities learn Uyghur language as well as there own. 7.6 million people speak Uyghur, and I had never even heard of it before! This trip has definitely broadened my world view. She said that up in the Karakul Lake area there were mainly Tajik people. They wear different hats, they are tall and brown and sort of fuzzy looking. I had seen a few in town. The ones I saw looked sort of "down and out". I am not sure if those ones are the ones that come to town, or if most Tajiks are poor relative to the Uyghurs. It makes me sad that matt and I didn't make it to Karakul Lake, I would have loved to see the lifestyles of the Tajiks.

The Uyghur neighborhood, Bulack Beshi, was very calm and peaceful. There were kids everywhere, it was great! They were just roaming the streets, playing and walking around. No adult supervision it seemed...We stopped for a drink and met a very funny Uyghur man who wore Matt's sunglasses and insisted that we smoke cigarettes. I have some funny pictures of him, I will post them when Matt and I get back. He asked if we were married, we said yes just to keep things easy, and then he asked about our children. I told him we were too young...He seemed incredulous that we thought we were too young!

Another final thought about Kashgar: There are SOOOO many dentist offices here! There are as many dentists in Kashgar as there are Starbucks in the U.S. Alot! Their teeth do look pretty good. If Beijing was smart, they would import some Uyghur dentists to the East coast of China. The teeth are horrendous over there!