Kashgar Sunday Bazaar and A Night in the Airport
All die-hard bazaar shoppers have heard of the famous Kashgar Sunday Bazaar. Over 50,000 people come in from the countryside to this Sunday Market primarily to buy and sell livestock. And, since shopping and eating are two of my favorite pastimes when traveling, it was a must see. I was primed for spectacular, spectacular and almost vibrating with visions of Chinese money flying out of my hands. A major, major disappointment on the shopping end. Clothes, food, and animals - sheep, goats, horses and camels, but no handicrafts or antiques. There was one upstairs place selling rugs and after much time, found one "used-and-abused" 3x5 for our hallway.
You had to go to the "fixed-price" shops which were anything but cheap but at least everything we bought was unique and I still have never seen others like them. Even though the stores advertise "fixed-price", you can haggle, and haggle we did. (ex-Marine sells Industrial Chemicals and is THE Master Haggler.) We had asked our tour operator whether or not to bring lots of $$ or use the Chinese Yuan - their reply - Yuan....WRONG! They love the U.S. $$, and we went through what little we had brought quickly.
a little more walking through town, people-watching...
little barber shops set up on one street, busy shaving their customers...
Shopped out and done with Kashgar, it was time for a 1-1/2 flight to Urumqi.
Our local guide picked us up in the evening for our flight from Kashgar to Urumqi. The plane was supposed to leave at 9:40pm but there were major storms, lots of rain. The guide left us at the airport (basically abandoning us) saying, "Oh, the plane will be a little delayed but no problem." It turned out to be a BIG problem. Three other flights were also delayed...all going to Urumqi...supposed to leave at 20-minute intervals. We waited...and waited...and because all announcements were made in Chinese ,we had no clue what was happening. Now the Chinese people waiting along with us in an upstairs big, open area...started shouting and screaming...in Chinese...at the airport personnel. I finally stood up on a chair and screamed myself, "Does anyone here speak English?" Silence...then a young girl and boy said, "we do." Hallelujah! The planes didn't have enough visibility to land and our flights would possibly leave at 7am the next morning. O...K..A..Y...no one was allowed to leave the airport or the waiting area...there weren't enough seats for four plane loads of stranded tourists...Chinese Nationals and us sprawled everywhere....and our guide was history.
We spent the entire night sleeping on the floor and sitting on a ledge at the Kashgar Airport. A riot almost broke out when after lots more Chinese screaming, personnel appeared with boxes of bottled water. A free-for-all while the Chinese tourists rushed them to grab a bottle. There was no way, we were going to get in that fray and stayed out of it sitting on our little ledge. Suddenly, one of the Chinese tourists participating in all this mayhem came over to give us one bottle of water. It was amazing how nice the people were to us...they offered us water...some of their food...we used our four-word vocabulary on them and they tried their three words of English on us. In the meantime, our two little translators would come back and forth everytime an announcement was made to tell us what was happening.
There was nothing to do but make the best of a bad situation and gut it out. One group put the empty water bottle carton to use, fashioned a card table, sat on the floor and played cards all night.
At 6:30 the next morning, the drone of plane engines and one after another, the four planes landed, loaded up and took off.
It's not easy to travel...and despite the best of planning...things go wrong, but this experience turned out to be one of the most memorable nights in our life...those wonderful Chinese tourists helping us and the night on the floor of the Kashgar Airport will never be forgotten. (Were we ever sorry that we tipped that Kashgar guide!) It was also worth the trials and tribulations getting to Kashgar just to say we were at the westernmost end of the Silk Road.
