Unibrows of Uighurstan

Some Uighur girls have the unfortunate genetic shortfall of having two eyebrows but alas, that's what the eyebrow pencil was invented for! Unibrows are the fashion here.



Xinjiang is tourist friendly. Instead of waiting in line for a ticket at the bus station I was escourted to the front by an attendant who helped me buy a ticket to Karghilik. Once my luggage was loaded into the bus a man approached me, showed me a badge and asked for my passport. He then walked across the parking lot to an unmarked car and photographed it. The police is watching who goes to Karghilik. It's the illegal back route into Tibet. Up until recently I had been considering taking this route but decided against it.

There ain't much going on in Karghilik. My first reaction to this town was "get me out of here!". That was followed by thirty minutes of watching Schindler's List dubbed into Uighur. Then I decided I may as well make an effort and see this God forsaken place...plus I was hungry. It ain't pretty but the people are so friendly. I walked into a mosque and was greeted by the caretaker. He introduced me to his family and offered me food and some water. Further down the street I stopped to watch the locals harvesting walnuts when five kids approached me. We had an incredible amount of fun for the next twenty minutes as I took pictures of them with my digital camera.

Back at the hotel I went to the front desk with the intention of informing the staff that Rene might show up later on. That turned into a two hour conversation with four local men.

Today I found out that I am pretty thick. I keep thinking everyone is so incredibly kind and well meaning. A Chinese woman and her Kiwi boyfriend told me on the bus to Hotan that one of the men from last night was propositioning me but they had refused to transalte this for me when it was happening.


Hotan is in the south of the Taklamakan desert in Xinjiang province. If you've seen Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon then you've seen the Taklamakan desert. The epic love scenes between Ziyi Zhang and that hot Asian guy take place in this desert. It took forever coming here! Our bus was stopped in the middle of the sand for three hours because the Chairman, Hu Jintao, of the People's Republic of China was coming through to look at a city the Chinese started to build out here! The bus driver was driving like a madman for the remainder of the trip. We almost hit several donkey carts!

I am pooped. Off to bed.

I have uploaded some of my pictures and stuck them in the appropriate blog entries below.