A large part of the excitement of KASHGAR lies in the experience of reaching it. From eastern China it is fantastically remote: as the crow flies, it's more than 4000km from Beijing, of which the thousand-plus kilometres from Ürümqi is for the most part sheer desert. As recently as the 1930s, the journey time to and from Beijing ran to a number of months. And yet Kashgar today, an oasis 1200m above sea level, is a remarkably prosperous and pleasant place, despite remaining, in part, an essentially medieval city. Coming from the west, Kashgar is the first point of arrival on the ancient overland routes from Pakistan and Kirgyzistan.

 

More than any city in Xinjiang, Kashgar is a bastion of old Chinese Turkestan. The population is nearly ninety percent Muslim, a fact you can hardly fail to notice with the great Id Kah Mosque dominating the central square, and the Uigur bazaars and tea shops, the smell of grilled lamb and, above all, the faces of the Turkic people around you. Kashgar's extraordinary Sunday market , for which half of Central Asia seems to converge on the city, is as exotic to the average Han Chinese as to the foreign tourist.

The history of Kashgar is dominated by its strategic position, first as a critical junction on the Silk Road, and more recently as the meeting point of three empires - Chinese , Soviet and British . Both Britain and the Soviet Union maintained consulates in Kashgar until 1949: the British with an eye to their interests across the frontier in India, the Soviets (so everyone assumed) with the long-term intention of absorbing Xinjiang into their Central Asian orbit. The conspiracies of this period are brilliantly evoked in Peter Fleming's News from Tartary and Ella Maillart's Forbidden Journey. At the time of Fleming's visit, in 1935, the city was in effect run by the Soviets, who had brought their rail line to within two days of Kashgar. During World War II, however, Kashgar swung back under Chinese control; and with the break in Sino-Soviet relations in the early 1960s, the Soviet border (and influence) firmly closed. It is only now, in the wake of the break-up of the Soviet Union, that Kashgar seems set to resume its status as one of the great travel crossroads of Asia.