the southern silk road

greetings from khotan, the largest city we will see in a while. duff, lindsey and i are now traveling the southern silk road. we have hit two towns since kashgar, yarkand and khotan. both have involved beautiful bus rides and great people watching. we have turned back on our loop of xin jiang, kashgar was our furthest point west. it is a good thing we have a strict itinerary we need to keep to because if we didn't the temptation of traveling part of the karkoram highway may have proved too strong. we are skirting the edge of the great taklamakan desert. it is a huge basin surrounded on all sides by mountians. we have now gone through the mountains to the north, west, and south.

we have seen some amazing things during our bus rides. first, the bus speeds up and slows down a lot as it weaves its way between donkey carts and motorcycles that share the road. we have also seen 5 or 6 camel carts. i wonder what the difference is if your family has a donkey, as opposed to a camel. is there more prestige attached to one or the other? do you have a camel if you live further from town? camels in rural areas? donkeys in the suburbs? these are the matters i puzzle these days.

the people on the busses have been neat. there are very few han chinese, perhaps one or two on each 20 person bus. there are lots of filthy but very happy little kids (the dust here is so intense, it would be impossible to keep a child clean). all the men have had hats. two pakistani traders sat in front of us on one bus, and spoke a little english. i have been knitting a little on the busses and this always interests people. yesterday i dropped my ball of yarn while we were going down hill and it wound up under the driver's seat (i was in the second to last row). it took a community effort to get it back to me, i was thoroughly red in the face, but people laughed and were kind. on our way from kashgar, two girls watched me knitting for a long time. they were covered almost completely with only their eyes showing. at one point, one of the girls leans over and says, my name, and doesn't say any more. i decided she is asking my name, so i repeat 'my name is kate'. i ask her hers, but she is too shy to talk, and a second later i discover her english isn't at comprehension level because she turns to her friend and says 'iskate', which with her accent sounds more like 'bisket'.

from the road we have passed dust devils and experienced out first sand storm. it wasn't very severe because all we did was close the windows. our packs, though, on the roof, have dirt caked on them.

check out lindsey's blog, she is posting about yarkand and the mosque we visited our last day in kashgar. i am slacking on posting because i have become obsessed with finding knitting patterns to make us more warm clothes for tibet. this afternoon we are going to see the silk factory in this town and learn more about silk production. first, though we must figure out the busses and how we are getting out of here. the towns here are few and far between and there aren't a lot of busses. it is a good thing our chinese is getting so good. we haven't seen any other tourists in days, this is definately not an area that you could travel in with no chinese.

it is hot here today, but we are glad we aren't in wuhan. we have heard on the news they are having a record breaking heat wave. as if it wasn't hot enough already.