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From Kashgar, along the rim of the Taklamakan
Buried mysteries
In this, the second part of his second series of travels along the Silk Road, Nishy Wijewardane recollects Kashgar’s intriguing past and embarks south and east along the desert rim in search of remarkable Buddhist and Islamic heritages.

The great game
Kashgar, on China’s far western desert, was a key strategic settlement in the "Great Game". This was the hidden “cold war”, a great chess game of intrigue played out during the 19th and 20th centuries between the empires of Tsarist Russia and Victorian England, involving China too. The Game struggled for control of a sphere of influence over the vast Central Asian region stretching from Khiva (today western Uzbekistan), to Gilgit (northern Pakistan), to Bishkek (Kyrgyzstan) and finally to Kashgar (China).

With British fears of Russian advances into India and the need to stay abreast of ever changing networks of local alliances across former Russia (Uzbekistan), Karakoram (Pakistan), Chinese Turkestan (western China, Xinjiang), and Russian Turkestan (Kyrgyzstan), the situation created a complex web of espionage and intrigue over extreme landscapes, and fuelled the careers of men (and women) of remarkable grit on all sides.

If history repeats itself, the region is today regaining some of its former mystique as the focus of US-Allied attention shifts in part from Afghanistan, the former Taliban and alleged Al-Qaeda strongholds, to the Ferghana and Xinjiang regions. These are areas with some orthodox religious societies and secessionist struggles for a Pan-Islamic Central Asian state across several "-stans". Such modern focus has followed alleged terrorist movements as well as the heady political lure of vast mineral resources, military vantage points and other opportunities for exerting (exporting?) influence with “democracy”. Xinjiang (1.6 million sq kms) is also China’s largest Muslim state with a total population of 19 million (at least 40% of whom are Muslim), and a source of sporadic ethnic tensions, although with some remarkable achievements as I was soon to experience.

Of intrepid British agents and explorers
I was drawn to Kashgar to see the former house of one George Macartney, besides being my stepping stone to ancient Buddhist sites of Xinjiang, brought to light by (Sir) Aurel Stein, an archaeologist of extraordinary talent whom I admired greatly, but to modern China a Western tomb robber akin to Albert Grunwedel, Albert von Le Coq, and Sven Hedin, Stein’s equally noteworthy professional forebears. From about 1890-1920, Macartney, a young Scottish-Chinese officer in the British India Army, volunteered to act as the unofficial eyes and ears of the British Empire in one of its most challenging locations (the Chinese had refused an official British Consulate because of earlier British efforts to curry favour with Yakub Beg, the King of Kashgaria).

He travelled through the Karakorams to a settlement that was probably no more than a handful of mud-and-wattle houses in a dirty, sandstorm plagued location with a history of violence since Mongol times. In due course, Macartney mastered knowledge of the region and its alliances, feeding hard earned intelligence to his masters, countering Russian and other interests, and proving his value to the British Raj. His young wife, Catherine, in her own right, was instrumental in constructing from scratch a remarkable house called Chini-bagh (“Chinese Garden”). Over 30 years, they transformed this squalid desert waste to the most enchanting English garden this side of the Karakorams and a welcome guest house for Aurel Stein and others.

With this passing history in mind, and omitting years of barbaric events in Kashgar, I reached Chini-bagh on a bright May morning. Naturally, much had changed; the enchanting gardens are, sadly, a mere figment of imagination. In the compound of the former garden, there stands an insipid grey concrete block that is Chini-bagh Hotel. A peculiar, artificial orange-green “maple” tree stands outside the Hotel entrance; the tree was to vex me for many days as I tried to decipher whether it was artificial or not, a point of significance as it was perhaps the only nod, deliberately inconsequential, to the former glory of Macartney’s home. His house is now a forlorn Uighur restaurant within the Chini-bagh compound; somewhat in depression, I savoured it alone one lunchtime, amidst the giggles of female staff. The food was unmemorable but the shy Uighur girls, after gathering their courage, fondly used the opportunity to practise their English.

It was one of my more disappointing, but understandable, moments that the heritage of a man who was remarkable as Macartney, should be so understated by current society. His was not an achievement of importance to the Chinese, but nonetheless it was of note in the modern history of Kashgar. Later, I visited the home of Macartney’s arch-rival, Petrovsky, the Russian Consul (who had been permitted to establish a consulate by the Chinese), set now amidst the compounds of another hotel, the Seman Hotel. Here, an attempt to preserve and commemorate the building was evident, including the rather peculiar corporate boardroom (a hotel facility?) set within it, and a “wild West” bedroom with wrought iron Russian beds is also to be seen. The air of a distinctly non-Chinese household still pervades. What diplomatic intrigues would have gone on here, the “mini-Kremlin” of the Taklamakan!

Khotan,Yarkand and the Southern Silk Road
In the days that followed, I made various journeys southwards of Kashgar, towards Khotan, the source of China’s best jade deposits. More importantly, it was once a thriving Buddhist kingdom of great repute with numerous monasteries from at least 4C AD (legend has it that Indian Emperor Ashoka’s eldest son settled here in 3C BC though Khotan existed from much earlier). Records show, remarkably, the existence of the equivalent of the Kandy Perahera in times of its Buddhist kingdoms! And yet, precious cave art from this region also depicts Nestorian Christian symbolism mixed with Buddhist themes and, according to archaeologists, sometimes drawn in Romanised styles, in the form of extraordinary winged figures.

Khotan (an inhabited oasis since 10,000 BC) is rich in historical legacy, especially linguistically; one of the great ancient linguistic hoaxes in modern history (akin to more recent misinterpretations of the forged Hitler Diaries) was exposed by Aurel Stein, a story in itself where a grubby peasant, Islam Akhun, defied the academic reputation of a leading Anglo-German philologist, Rudolf Hoernle. As the first silk production centre outside of China proper, this now desert settlement was once home to large extents of mulberry trees in its heyday. Along with Bukhara (Uzbekistan) and Turkmenistan, Khotan also became renowned for carpet weaving, a trade that is still undertaken albeit in a more mechanised manner. (One of my aspirations was to obtain a Khotanese carpet to accompany an old Bukharan one I had acquired at considerable personal risk on a previous journey, and I happily realised this with an equal weight of desert dust).

On the long bleak sandstorm ridden road to Khotan, I spent time in dusty, mud-bricked Yarkand, another former Buddhist settlement and a well known Silk Road caravanserai. Of particular interest was my ambling visit to old Sufic graveyards of the kings of Yarkand, and the tomb of Aman Isa Khan (1526-1560), a renowned poet (and wife of a Khan of Yarkand), a soul of this province. I narrowly escaped an uproar, being ushered into an ancient mosque on my Muslim looks but suddenly unable to comply with the verses. Everywhere, remnants of timeless societies jostled, perhaps unevenly, with slightly more modern lifestyles but less confrontationally than in faster changing Kashgar.

Buried cities of the Taklamakan
Back in Kashgar, my inquiries of several ancient Buddhist sites, Miran, Niya, Dandan Oilik, Mazar Tagh, Rawak Stupa, Karadong etc., most excavated painstakingly by Aurel Stein a century ago, drew no familiarity, even by the Chinese speaking American who ran an agreeable Western watering hole, the Caravan Café. My hopes of pairing with a like minded traveller soon vanished. I was relegated to staring at the thoroughly American muffin menu that graced the café’s headboards while pondering my own movements. The discovery of delicious locally bottled mulberry juice momentarily lifted my spirits.

After some days and various calls, help was sought from an all too enterprising local Han Chinese who seemed to know of some of the sites, many deep inside the treacherous dunes of the Taklamakan. It soon became clear, however, that he was salivating for $8000 for the expedition trek as the journey was hazardous, there being no roads. Moreover, most ruins were officially strictly off-limits due to tremendous unexcavated archaeological value, protected essentially by their desert remoteness. Having travelled this far, the inability specifically to visit ruins that I had so long sought was disheartening to say the least. It underlined not only the unpredictabilities of travel in this remote province but made me more aware of required necessities perhaps for my next visit.

On the Kashgar-Urumchi rail line
Undeterred, I made my own unaided plans to travel eastwards from Kashgar to Kucha, another legendary Buddhist state which lay north of the Taklamakan. Time was an issue, as my ultimate destination was two weeks away in Dunhuang, middle China; this made any bus travel far too risky. Nervously, I left the relative familiarity of Kashgar on a night train journey 500+ km east one late afternoon.

I had purchased a second class “hard sleeper” ticket and was soon to be pleasantly surprised. An orderly modern train lay in the station, each coach staffed by a smart uniformed young girl (no English spoken). The ticket bought me a clean dorm styled bunk bed in a modern cabin with up to four stacked beds on each side, with access up by ladder. A thermos flask lay on the small table at ground level, separating the rows of beds, and clean linen lined my bed. The entire carriage was full of Chinese – no foreigners to be seen – travelling presumably to Urumchi some 1500 kms and many hours away (there were few intermediate stops). Part workers part families, I speculated, observing the quiet interactions amongst people perhaps returning after a weekend back to work in Urumchi, Xinjiang’s capital.

Despite my odd presence, I aroused no peculiar looks nor even body language, none of those frigid embarrassments that sometimes one encounters on trains in Europe. Indeed, my immediate neighbours tried to engage me in conversation which proved frustrating for my lack of Chinese or Uighur. The sheer cleanliness - every two hours my already spotless carriage was mopped (one could even walk barefoot); the complete sense of orderliness - a numbered ticket yielded precisely a free unencumbered seat, however full the train; the regularity of a food trolley that rolled pleasantly through the long hours…were singularly impressive. The carriage itself was exemplary – as modern a coach as anywhere in the developed world, with a two floor arrangement. It was, I felt, high time that British Rail (or any "developed" service) came on a study tour of China's Kashgar line. I recollected a recent “second class” ticket train ride from Peradeniya to Colombo, where one was treated to a pathetic, squashed “standing room only” experience for the entire journey, along with fellow sufferers.

Soon after boarding, the cabin girl greeted me with a large wallet, took my paper ticket and gave me what resembled a credit card. As no one spoke English in the vicinity, I was perplexed as to what to do (I rather hoped it entitled me for dinner, wishfully thinking) but I bided my time and watched the landscape change.

Drawing out of an unremarkable Kashgar Station, one is suddenly bedazzled with greenery unseen inside a dusty, brown town. Neat rectangular rural houses reflected an architecture that was familiar to me from as far away as the Khyber Pass, being constructed in a geometric old enclosed courtyard fashion of the steppes from mud, straw and dried timbers, with flat roofs in this hot and cold desert climate. Beautiful lush vineyards, green with ivy on stick tresses and chequered with small patches of irrigated crops and water channels, often lay adjacent to these homesteads; few animals were to be seen. I yearned to learn more of the rural life out there, but instead remained now a helpless prisoner in my train. Occasionally, one glimpsed ancient mud walled defensive fortifications running through these farm houses. Soon, however, the train glided quietly (another revelation) past habitations and an eerie desert landscape began to appear.

Along the wastes of the Northern Silk Road
Sandy, flat, duneless plains with scant vegetation feature this northern rim of the Taklamakan; on my right lay the desert and on my left lay the backbone of the great Tien Shan “Celestial” mountains that fell into Kyrgyz territory. This was the great Northern Silk Route which went from Kashgar to Urumchi and arched down to Dunhuang where the Southern Route, from Kashgar southwards through Khotan, Miran and Niya conjoined (in between lay a 300,000 sq km shifting desert). However, the might of the Taklamakan was not evident on my right (that was reserved for my final flight across it from Urumchi) and somehow the landscape looked misleadingly less foreboding than I had anticipated.

Some miles out of Kashgar, on a ridged plateau on the desert, my heart quickened as I saw the clear outlines of a long ruined mud bricked Buddhist dagoba jutting out on the plains; to think of people once in devout prayer in such lonely, silent places on the Silk Road, so far from busy temples at home but connected by similar thought, was overwhelming.

I enjoyed the solitude of my journey towards Kucha, but as night fell my worries heightened. My single greatest fear (in China) was missing my station, a lonely midnight stop half way across a 1500 km trip and hours away from another station (a frequent phenomenon). I did not know where or when Kucha would appear nor could I elicit any explanation from the staff beyond the typical smiling nod of an apparent recognition of the word “Kuqa”; how could I explain later that I had got off at the wrong stop and needed to return? The worry ensured I slept lightly, while my compatriots, having all made their pot noodles (an essential feature of Chinese train life) using that empty thermos and a saunter down the cabin to a permanently boiling water tank, had chatted themselves pleasantly to deep sleep.

Around 3 a.m., a voice and a hand on my shoulder woke me. “Kuqa” she whispered and the cabin girl - poor sleepless soul - handed back my paper ticket, awaiting the return of the “credit card” (what organization)! I hurriedly gathered my rucksack and praying fervently that no misunderstandings had taken place on my choice of destination, stumbled out into the night and a small, sleepy station in the middle of a barren landscape. For my luck, a few private taxi drivers were keeping midnight vigil at Kucha station in the hope of passengers. After some negotiation, I managed to get across to the town several kilometres away and into a solitary, rather decrepit hotel with no hot water, yet grateful that I had made it here safely to the middle of nowhere.

Next week, Part 3: The Light of Kucha

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