Kashgar

Yet another rest day.

I'd heard about the Kashgar bikeshop while in Bishkek. Touring cyclists take note of these kinds of things in this area of the world as quality supplies & help are hard to come by. In my case I'd come to the realisation that the new front rack that I'd purchased in Geneva wasn't really strong enough for my needs & I wasn't about to come to some compromise with it unless I had no other choice. I'd also suffered from a broken spoke (on the cassette side for those to whom it means something) that I'd only been able to fix by borrowing a tool from another cyclist staying at the same hotel. This bikeshop fulfilled both of my needs, at a very reasonable price. In addition to this they were pretty cool to, spending a couple of hours installing the rack, checking out my front hub & truing my rear wheel, for which they didn't charge me & giving me lunch too! Unfortunately when I got back to the hotel I found that my panniers wouldn't work with the new rack unmodified. However the modification wasn't difficult to arrange at a metal workshop that I found by wandering around.

In the evening Nick & I went downtown & ate breathtakingly hot food at street stalls.

I'm beginning to really enjoy Kashgar & China. Kashgar I find fascinating for the mix of Uighur & Chinese. In one part of town everything has the distinctive Central Asian look & wears Uighur hats, there are no Chinese around. In another, the modern-built section, only Chinese faces can be seen. It feels like you jump from one world to another not a single city. I like both worlds, that of the Uighur for its gentle & friendly charm & that of the Chinese for its dynamism and vibrancy.

I've read much ill of the Chinese, that their efforts to create a unified China is at the expense of its ethnic minorities such as the Uighur & that they make bad colonists. Indeed I've seen a few cases in which Chinese appear not to be well appreciated because of their behavior, such as going into the main mosque inappropriately dressed. However I find it hard to have a bad opinion about the Chinese that I've met or seen on the street so far.

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