Pakistan Holidays

Jeep Tour K2 Trek Snow Capped High Mountains Valley Travel

 

Monday August 25: Kashgar – Tashkurgan

 

As noted earlier, Tashkurgan is where Chinese customs and emigration formalities are administered, and it is where we were due to catch the NATCO bus to Pakistan.

 

By daylight it was evident that the gorge road through the mountains was quite spectacular. We re-passed through the two army/police road checks. Unfortunately the weather, though not actually raining, was very overcast so although the mountains with their glaciers were very attractive/spectacular, they were not really photographable.

 

A lot of Tajiks live in yurts. There are fairly ugly permanent yurts but made of concrete, but also the much more attractive temporary yurts. At this altitude the temporary yurts are packed up and moved to a lower altitude for the winter, and this we learned, was to be done in the next ten days. We stopped by one of the yurts where one of the children was ‘baking’ the flat bread in what looked like a frying pan over a small fire, and were invited inside to view. The inside of the yurt was covered (floor and ‘walls’) with rugs and had a central stove which made it very warm. Of course they were, not unreasonably, interested in selling trinkets etc.; but why not? Margaret bought some things which (in our terms) were very cheap.

 

Further up the road, by the Kara Kull lake, which is a beautiful turquoise colour, was a photogenic ‘village’ of yurts – again, a shame the weather wasn’t better.

Other sights of note were a group of camels carrying hay for the winter, and some attractive Tajik tombs.

 

By daylight Tashkurgan turned out to be a larger, more modern and more interesting place than we had thought on our brief acquaintance on the way from Pakistan. Tashkurgan means ‘stone city’, and just outside town are the remains of the old 16-18th century fort – you can see how it would have dominated the valley.

 

There are actually a number of newish hotels in Tashkurgan and you cannot help but wonder why. We upgraded to the Crown Hotel which was owned by the same company that owned the Karakoram Café, so it was very nice. It did however also have the ubiquitous very hard mattresses and I have already commented on the sealing of the showers (even more remarkable given that the place is Singapore owned). It was also here that we met the Dragoman group that had been warned-off Kashgar.