Kashgar

To experience something completely different we hopped on 2 planes to China's wild west and the city of Kashgar. With around 75% of the people being Uighur and the majority being strict Muslims, it honestly felt as if we'd landed in another country. Our taxi driver, who spoke Chinese and Uighur, was amazed that we were from South Africa and entertained us with smiles and face pulling on the way from the airport to the hotel. I told him my name was Brad and after struggling with the pronunciation for a while he decided that 'Borat' suited me much better.

The Uighur people really have a tough time holding onto their ideals and way of life. The Chinese, who are the biggest control freaks I've ever come across, rule over the population as if they were all naughty primary school children. Those working for the government are refused half an hour off every Friday to attend the mosque and there are no Muslim schools. Even though the Idkah mosque is the biggest in China, a lot of men have to line up outside because there are just so many of them. The culture is strong but I just wonder how long it will last.

The funniest thing about Kashgar is that it has 2 times, local and Beijing (or rest of China). All of China officially has 1 time zone, which besides being ridiculous sums up the country pretty well. In Kashgar, everything related business, travel and the government runs according to Beijing time, everything else is 2 hours behind.

Even though we were caught somewhere in between the 2 times we found the place intoxicating. It's really unlike anything we've ever seen or heard of and it's so different to the rest of the country. The women walk around and work in clothes that you'd normally see at a fancy dress party and the men are quite happy eating lamb for breakfast, lunch and dinner. The traditional sand and mud homes are slowly being replaced by modern 'Chinese' buildings but as soon as a sandstorm passes through they all turn the same colour. We just hope we can get away because when a serious sandstorm arrives all flights are cancelled for at least a few days and sometimes more than a week.