Tim Boelter

We just arrived in the town of Kashgar, one of the greatest cities on the Silk Road. It's actually 4:00 in the morning here and I will probably fall asleep while writing this. Today we traveled a great distance and filmed one of the oldest Buddhist cave painting sites in China.

My last dispatch was written in the city of Korla on the 13th of May. Since leaving Korla some things have happened, good and bad.

We headed south approximately 130 kilometers out of Korla instead of west toward Kashgar. Lao Wang wanted us to visit two things. The first was a tourist village called the Lopnur People Village. The second: he wanted us to see the remains of an actual village of the Lopnur People. This actual village was been abandoned and left for the desert to take.

The tourist village was nice, giving people a look into how the Lopnur people lived and survived in the desert. The village was a reproduction of what their housing looked like and had a nice building that housed artifacts from the actual village. An interesting point about the Lopnur people is they had boats and fished, here in the desert.

Seeing the tourist village was nice, but we wanted to explore further in the desert to see if we could find physical evidence of the actual village that disappeared. More detail will come about the Lopnur people.

We headed further west following a dry riverbed. On most maps the river is called the Tarim He. Although we were on a road the GPS showed nothing. After 20 kilometers or so the paved surface disappeared and we hit the rough stuff again. At times our gear came off the floor of the vehicle as we bounced along the very rough road. We traveled for another hour maybe two hours before we came to a village of Uigher people.

Here Lao Wang spoke with the locals about the extinct Lopnur village. Mike and I took photos and HD footage. The village was poor and the people lived a very simple life. The Uigher's have so many physical characteristics of Middle Eastern people but they originally came from Mongolia. They are also Muslim and most could pass as Turkish. What was amazing to me is that here in the middle of the desert this village exists. Apparently the dry riverbed seasonally flows and provides irrigation for the crops, which would explain the many small water control points we passed over. The landscape was mostly flat and varied between sand dunes and these peculiar gnarled trees that according to Lao Wang could be over 1,000 years old.

After spending another hour and half traveling beyond the Uigher village to look for evidence of the Lopnur village, we gave up. The road was to unpredictable and we started to come to multiple intersections, where each path led into another part of the desert. The last thing we needed was to get lost. We did have a GPS but we weren't taking the time to put in waypoints.

We continued west, passing remote mud and straw houses along the way. It was as though we were traveling back in time. These people lived off the land and that was it. It was truly amazing to see this, especially after coming from towns like Korla and Beijing.

Just before we reached the Trans Taklimakan Highway, we went from driving in very rural living conditions to a landscape of modern oil rigs and the sight of orange flames dotting the horizon. This was definitely oil country, and we were going through the heart of the operation. It was because of the oil exploration that the 500-kilometer Trans Taklimakan Highway was built. This amazing paved road gives access to the very heart of one of the world's most grueling deserts. An amazing feat when you think of it.

After traveling for approximately 10-hours we reached the outskirts of Kuqa and this we did on fumes. It was pure luck that we managed to sputter into a gas station. The whole time I thought the spare jerry cans on the roof of the car were filled with fuel. Perhaps that is why Lao Wang seemed so concerned. We weren't using them until later when we would really need them. Well, we almost really needed them.

From Kuja the relentless driving started out normal. We were heading just to the outskirts of town to visit the remains of a lookout tower that would warn the old city of invaders. The tower is called Kizil Beacon Tower. Seeing the tower may have been anticlimactic considering it took us over an hour and a half to get to it, even after seeing the tower from a distance. The difficulty was figuring out how to get around an oil pipeline that was being excavated.

After visiting the beacon tower we traveled down a riverbed (gorge) surrounded by magnificent sandstone cliffs that had been eroded by the winds of time. Just as we thought the view couldn't get any better we passed through the Tian Shan Mysterious Gorge. Here the strata of the red clay jutted skyward at 30-degree angles and formed uniform towering strips that lined the canyon. The brilliant red colors were absolutely incredible.

We continued onward approximately 130 kilometers until we reached the Kizil Thousand Buddha caves. These caves house the first Buddhist cave paintings in China, dating back to the 2nd century.

Upon arrival I was denied access to this area with my camera, but after a lot of discussion and Lao Wang's press card they eventually let me take the camera in. Up to this point I have been locked out of almost all the important heritage sites in China. Lao Wang seems to have the ability to get me into some of them, but usually this is after an hour of discussion and phone calls. Although no one is allowed to photograph or film inside the caves, by the end of the day the director of the heritage site allowed me to shoot anything outside of the caves.

Our long day at the caves became even longer when we decided to push on directly to Kashgar. After a quick stop in Aksul for dinner we traveled into the night where the driving became even more hair raising than during the day.

Lao Wang drives faster than most Chinese and he actually knows how to handle a car better than most Chinese. However when you're dealing with unpredictable pedestrians, bicyclists, donkeys, farm animals and tractor drivers who can't hear, something is bound to happen. We were coming into a town when this very large rooster was walking across the road. We were traveling about 100-kilometers an hour but starting to decelerate as we entered the congested area. I saw the rooster and warned Lao Wang. He jammed the brakes quickly and the cock jumped backward. But just as we both thought the animal was stopping, at the last minute he ran full bore ahead right under us. I felt terrible. I looked into the rearview mirror and just saw feathers everywhere. I initially felt bad for the animal but then I realized that some poor farmer was out of an important commodity.

We came close to having a head-on collision with a donkey pulling a cart full of people returning from their outing at the Sunday market. Apparently some donkeys follow the donkey in front of them. As we approached an intersection a caravan of donkeys pulling carts were making a left hand turn (across our lane of traffic). As we approached, one of the drivers was pulling back on the stirrups, but the donkey just continued right into our path. The driver started to whip the poor beast senseless to try and redirect him, but the animal, being a mule, struggled onward. Lao Wang was forced to brake hard as the animal and his human cargo just made it through the intersection.

We raced on through many towns filled with many obstacles and although I was in the passenger seat, I couldn't help to motion my foot to press the brake.

Our drive to Kashgar was filled with the same obstacles, but at night without lights and driving at over 120-kilometers an hour the reaction time is slower and the outcome more grave. After traveling over 1,000 kilometers and arriving at our hotel at 4:00 a.m. we were bushed. But we made up some time and for us, we would need it. The Silk Road continues to amaze me, it is such a vast distance to travel. No wonder it took three and a half years to travel from Beijing to Kashgar in the 1600s.

—Tim Boelter

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