As with any great travel story, there has got to be a mishap. And the classic one is that the bus breaks down. Well, ours did today. Fortunately, after various coughing fits and screeching halts, our bus managed to at least last until we arrived at Lake Karakul which is about a five-hour drive from Kashgar in the direction of Pakistan. Lake Karakul is stunning - a large peaceful blue icy lake shadowed by the snow-capped Kongur Mountain and the Muztagh Ata mountain. Obviously, there are the usual tourist shops along the lake but they aren't terribly aggressive or problematic in terms of photo angles. Lake Karakul is at around 3200m and made for a sunny but bracing day (probably around 10-15C). It was very pleasant to stroll along the lake after the typical chinese pitstop lunch.
All along the way, we see beautiful sharp-angled snowy peaks (met a backpacker who was trekking to climb up to Muztagh Ata), fields with patchy grass cut by a mercury-like rivulet which accompanyed us almost all the way to Tashkurgan, and of course the blue blue sky. (Check out the pics)
Like a typical scene in any novel where Chinese people and foreign tourists are involved, once we determined that our bus was on its last legs, there was lots and back and forth between the various guides and the driver on what to do about the bus. The poor driver seemed reluctant to take advice from the foreign tourists on mechanics (understandably, there's always some level of proprietary feeling about one's own vehicle). And then the local guide didn't seem too keen to change the bus, probably because there were already other arrangements with other tourists and their company might lose money. Then all of a sudden, the Chinese GM turns up and it all gets solved! We transfer onto the shiny new bus and get into Tashkurgan without further ado arriving late afternoon, in time to see the Old Tajik Castle. The castle is not terribly big and the remains are now just a rounded wall atop a small hill. Once one climbs up to the castle ruins, there's a great view of the Tashkurgan grasslands at one's feet.
Before we even got to Lake Karakul, we passed through our first checkpoint at Ghez (grim-faced border police 公安 flicking through passports to make sure we got into China properly and have a visa for Pakistan). Tashkurgan however is the place of the formal Pakistan-China border office so more checks tomorrow. NO photo-taking at the border - we have all been strictly admonished and apparently we may also expect random checking of our cameras to see if we took any forbidden photos. And no alcohol till I leave Pakistan (11 dry days!)
Internet access is brilliant at Tashkurgan (got on line in about 10 secs) and the hotel is clean and bright, and frankly, better than many of the hotels in larger Chinese cities - I find out the Tashkurgan hotel is Singaporean-run, what else to expect! I suspect the hygiene level will not be quite the same from tomorrow onwards....
