Wearing the Headscarf

When I was in 10th grade the mosque near our high school had some sort of open house for non-Muslims and we got extra credit in our history class for going (McNulty shout-out). My classmates and I talked with some girls our age who were wearing headscarves. I still remember vividly our conversation because I have to admit that it quite dramatically changed my perspective on women in Muslim culture.

They told us about how the headscarf was something special that they got to start wearing around 12 years old (though it varies widely, of course), and that it’s an exciting prospect and an honor to get to start wearing it. Also, it’s their own decision to wear it, they could take it off if they wanted to (but they don’t). They want to wear it because it makes them feel more comfortable.

There are other religious, social, and cultural reasons to wear the headscarf as well: it signifies modesty, displays membership in a community, and adheres to Allah’s instructions, for example. Besides, they don’t have to worry about their hair this way. Of course the headscarf is also pretty, a fashion statement, an accessory of sorts, like a necklace or a belt, or a scarf.

I could sympathize, but it wasn’t until I wore a headscarf here myself that I could really empathize.

I sometimes wear a headscarf in the city, but I always did while I was traveling in the countryside because people living there are on the whole more religiously and socially conservative. Almost all the local women (not including the Han) had their hair covered.

When in Rome, do as.

While I was traveling, I only saw two local women outside without a headscarf. Thus, wearing the headscarf was virtually imperative if I didn’t want to offend people or get harassed. To quote the Lonely Planet guide, “women traveling here should cover their arms and legs as they would when traveling in any Muslim country.”

I absolutely loved wearing the headscarf while I was traveling for several reasons, even to the point where I wouldn’t leave the hotel without it. I still wear it in the city sometimes. It also got me in trouble. And with it I experienced discrimination in an eye-opening way.

The headscarf makes me feel more comfortable. For one, it disguises my foreign identity (until I start speaking, that is. Then I get the question, “You’re not from around here, are you?”). Many of the locals have blue eyes, so the only difference in terms of physical appearance is the way I dress and the way I act. When you take away “the way I dress” variable, it’s much harder to distinguish me from the locals. They are fascinated by this, of course, as am I.

But perhaps more importantly, the headscarf makes me feel less exposed in a sexual and naked way. Every culture has different ideas of which body parts of a woman are sexualized. For Americans, it’s the boobs and butt. In many Islamic cultures, exposed hair, legs, and arms are also sexualized. Walking around in short shorts is equivalent for many cultures as walking around without a shirt on is for us. On some European beaches, this is okay. On American beaches, this is not okay.

In this culture, baring your legs is equivalent to baring your chest. You look extremely exposed, and practically naked if wearing a skirt or shorts with your bare legs exposed. Now, skirts with pantyhose are okay, and many women wear skin-colored pantyhose (and black leggings under a skirt are popular too). But bare legs are not. You might as well just be walking around with a thong for all they’re concerned. I’ve even started to feel slightly shocked and taken aback when I see a girl with shorts on here.

When I wear a headscarf in the city, people tell me I look like a farmer. But in the countryside, fully covering your arms and legs is a must and covering your hair is even better. Having your hair exposed is like walking around with your cleavage exposed. Sure, you can do it, but you’ll look exposed, people will stare, and people will judge and objectify you.

For me, wearing the headscarf was a form of liberation through protection. By protecting my vulnerabilities--as a woman and a foreigner--I not only expressed respect to the local culture and society I was traveling in, but I also just personally felt more comfortable walking around. I didn’t get as many stares, and people automatically expressed a certain level of respect for me as a modest woman. A lot of people just automatically assumed I was Turkish or Uzbek.

It was wearing the headscarf myself that I finally experienced on a personal and visceral level that the headscarf is a sign of modesty and a mode of respect for yourself, and the men, culture and religion surrounding you. Yet it is judged--looked down upon even--by outsiders, those ignorant of Muslim religion and culture, not with respect but rather as a sign of rebellion against the state, and treated with disgust, discrimination, sexism, and ignorance by outsiders.

Of course, in America we have a very different mindset. For us, we think of wearing clothes as, “It’s my freedom of choice and if someone doesn’t like it, they don’t have to look, and men should be able to control themselves by not staring at me.” Indeed, slut shaming and victim blaming are (usually) rejected in our culture. As an American, I believe that I can and should wear whatever I want without being slut shamed or victimized or raped or stared at or judged. This is a really important part of our culture as Americans that women should be able to wear whatever they want.

But I’m not in America. I’m in a different country and I would like to show respect for their culture. It is a sign of modesty, respect, and politeness to cover yourself. As a foreigner, the headscarf signifies, “I recognize that this is your custom to dress like this and I respect that.” Just like I don’t run around shaking hands with men or eating pork on the street.

For locals, the headscarf a sign of modesty and respect for themselves, and their bodies. By protecting themselves and their bodies from being exposed, they grant themselves more freedom to walk around and do what they want without being sexualized or objectified everywhere they go. Without the headscarf, they perhaps might not leave the house. With it, they can move freely about the city.

By protecting your vulnerabilities, you grant yourself more freedom to do as you choose safely and consciously protecting yourself from getting hurt, mentally and physically.

The headscarf is also political, of course, or at least it has become political recently. It’s a sign of rebellion, of difference, of distinguishment from the other and of identifying with the Muslim world. And it is greeted by the outside world with nothing but confusion, and with an orientalized, exoticized, objectified gaze. 

Some people even treat the headscarf with disgust and hatred, thinking that if we took the headscarf away from Muslim women they would be more free. And how wrong they are! If you took the headscarf away you would take away their freedom to move about relatively freely in society and outdoors.

Wearing or not wearing a headscarf is a deeply personal and highly private decision. I highly enjoy the freedom and protection of wearing a headscarf out in public and knowing that I will not be asked about it, even among my closest friends. If I show up to a gathering with friends with a headscarf on, they might comment on how much I look like a local, or say I look pretty. But they will never ask me, “why are you wearing a headscarf?” I even realized a couple times when trying to offer an explanation to people on why I was wearing it they would sometimes even interrupt me and say, “it’s the same, it’s all good, we don’t care either way, you don’t need to explain your decision.”

So that is perhaps why my roommate last semester was so upset or maybe perturbed or maybe just annoyed when I asked her, “why do some people wear headscarves and some people don’t?” and she said, “you mean people like me?” and I nodded before she proceeded to give me her explanation. I realize now that as curious as I was, it was a rude question to ask of her, especially as a foreigner.

That is why when governments start getting involved in dictating a highly private decision regarding how women wish to present their bodies to the world--a decision that even my closest friends wouldn’t dare question--that starts offending people. That’s when the personal gets public and the public gets personal.

To give one example, a friend of mine is currently fighting with her fiance. He wants her to wear a headscarf, but if she does she’ll have to give up her job at a state-affiliated workplace. She’s stuck between two forces, dictated primarily by men, telling her what she can and cannot do in regards to exposing or not exposing her body in a certain way. The personal has indeed become political. 

She told me this story while I was wearing a headscarf. I was ashamed and sad that I had the privilege to put on and take off my headscarf when it is convenient for me, whereas she is faced with a huge life decision based on whether or not she will start wearing one or not.  

How dare people think that they have any right to determine or judge how anyone chooses to cover, adorn, or expose his or her body.

Because wearing a headscarf is such a deeply personal decision, I don’t go around asking women, “so how do you feel about the headscarf?” That would be a good way for me to piss people off and to get kicked out of the country. But I did get to talk to two young women in one of the towns I went to, who initiated their own feelings about it: “If I wore sexy clothes maybe the Han wouldn’t bother me, maybe then they wouldn’t even notice me.”

Another said, “I want to be international but if other people see me without a headscarf they will look down on me so I always wear it outside, not wearing it is not okay.”

Whether or not you wear a headscarf here, you're screwed either way. If you don’t wear one, you signal your distance from local Muslim culture, and are sometimes even thought of as a traitor or slutty, or judged by others as an objectified female sex object, or an unholy or dirty person.

However, the wearer of the headscarf is also subject to discrimination by non-Muslims, and I felt this in a major way while I was traveling. I was treated with distrust and suspicion by outsiders I interacted with who thought I was a local. Being treated with prejudice, suspicion and distrust is a terrible feeling.

After getting to one city, I was turned down by the first two hotels I went to, where they said they were full. I took my headscarf off, and was accepted at the next hotel I went to. It’s definitely possible that this was a coincidence, but I was accepted at that hotel with nothing more than a somewhat gruff, “You’re not a journalist, are you?” and smiles after that.

The strongest I felt it was the three times I went into school supply stores with my headscarf. The Han people working there were very short with me, saying “ting bu dong” (“I can’t understand you”) whenever I tried to say something (I was looking for notecards). They did not go out of their way to help me, just saying, “no, we don’t have that.” When people think I’m a local and I can feel their annoyance, hatred, mistrust, fear, and distance. They scoff at me, “ting bu dong.” It’s worlds of difference from when they think I’m American.

I wouldn’t go to the market or walking around town or ride a bus without a headscarf. But I can’t go to school or in any government building with one on, and wouldn’t go to the train station or the airport with one on either.   

But I’m clearly and painfully obviously in a privileged position. I get to wear it when it is advantageous for me to wear one and take it off when it isn’t. This is a luxury that many Muslim women do not have. They thus may find themselves in a Catch-22 situation: they can either feel naked or be discriminated against. Which would you choose?

Part 6: Crossing the border

Kashgar -> Osh, Kyrgyzstan (click here for a map)

After our epic meal upon our return to Kashgar yesterday, I slept on the porch of the youth hostel last night, and I wake up to the sounds of three of the hostel kittens (not to be confused with hostile kittens) playing and fighting, jumping across tables and running around my head. And when they wrestle with each other, it reminds me of jiujitsu.

We leave at 7:30 am local time (9:30 am Beijing time). When we step out of the front doors of the hostel, the bright sunlight smacks me in the face and makes me squint. We’re on the road again! Less than 24 hours after getting back from Tashkurgan, we’re ready to continue our travels to Kyrgyzstan.

“Do you mind if we get a taxi to the bus station?,” Mag asks. “I’m really tired.”

“Nope, that’s fine,” I say. We look at the map of Kashgar that the hostel gave us. A black square with two circles on the bottom for wheels has been drawn around the words, “international bus station.” I had walked there the week before planning on buying bus tickets to Osh, before I realized that the bus was over 500 RMB and 22 hours long. I’d read online that it was cheaper and faster to take a taxi and hitchhike with truckers across the border. When I first read about this online, I thought to myself, “That sounds horribly stressful, potentially dangerous and inefficient, with a high risk of getting ripped off and/or lost along the way. I’d rather take the bus while listening to audiobooks and sleeping the whole way.”

One night I was eating dinner at the hostel (they made very delicious meals of Chinese style vegetable dishes for very cheap, which is nice when you’re craving veggies which happens to me a lot in these parts) and talking with Flo and Mag, and they said, “we might go to Kyrgyzstan using taxis and hitchhiking next week, you’re more than welcome to come!”

I thought about it and talked to several other international travelers, who said, “You definitely don’t want to take the bus! So expensive and so boring!”

So we get in the taxi and he starts going in the opposite direction of the international bus station. I ask him and he says, “Yes, of course we’re going in the right direction, but are you sure you don’t want to go to the train station?” I say, “No, not the train station, the international bus station.” I say as clearly and as slowly as possible since my handle on the local language is still pretty shaky.

“Are you sure? I don’t think there are any more busses going to Kyrgyzstan right now....”

“No it’s okay, we’re going to get a taxi from the bus station.”

“Oh ok, I gotcha,” he says.

So he takes us to the DOMESTIC bus station. And we’re fuming. I’m fuming, they’re fuming, we’re all fuming and we get out of the taxi without any intention to pay. But he looks so desperate and so upset, begging me to pay him the 5 kuai and so I do anyway. That 5 kuai is not as important to me as it is to him and it’s his job and his car and his gas money and his rent he has to pay on the car.

So we get in another car and the first fishy thing about this guy is that 1. he claims that he doesn’t know where or what Kyrgyzstan is, and I have never met a local who doesn’t know that country. 2. He seems completely clueless about where the international bus station is, repeating the name of it over and over again and pointing to the domestic bus station across the street, saying, “are you sure you don’t mean that one?” We load our huge backpacks in the car and get all settled in.

Then he turns to me with a smile on his face and says, “ok, so how about 30 kuai to take you there?” And I said, “no, you need to use the meter, I’ve been there on foot and it’s actually pretty close to here, so no we will not pay 30 kuai.” He insists on the 30 kuai and I, much to my embarrassment, start to scream, “NO!” at him.

So we get out of the taxi and we walk to the closest intersection, and get in another taxi. About 50 meters down the road, the car *literally* breaks down. The driver gets out, lifts up the front hood, fiddles around with something for a few minutes, get back in and tries to start the engine. No go. He gets out again. Fiddles, gets back in. No go. So we decide to finally get out of the taxi and we get another taxi. We takes us where we want to go, to where it says international bus station on the map.

We get out of taxi #4 of the morning and I ask three men sitting underneath a sun pavilion tent about the bus station and as I listen to them talk about the situation with each other, a realization dawns on me. The international bus station isn’t here. It must have moved. I confirm this with them and ask them where it moved. To the train station.

Suddenly everything starts to make sense. That’s why the first guy wanted to take us to the train station and why the second guy wanted 30 kuai. It’s already 8:30 am local time at this point and we’re starting to run out of time- we want to get to the border control before they close for lunch at 11 am local time (they take a long lunch break at the border from 11 am to 2 pm local time).

We can take the bus or another taxi to the train station and try to get a taxi from there. But it will be 9:30 by then… A man in his fifties with bright green eyes wearing a grey suit offers to take us to Wuqia, the town closest to the border, for 50 kuai each. I start to cry.

Flo and Mag are like, “What happened? What’s going on?” I hadn’t translated for them what was going on yet or shared with them my new realization. “It’s okay, it’s okay, it’s going to be okay Sarah,” they assure me. I tell them what I’ve just learned. We’re getting desperate. I say through my teary eyes and wobbly sobbing voice, wiping my tear stained cheeks, “We’re students, help us out, we have no money… 30 kuai a person...please...”

Probably a little more dramatic than necessary but I was genuinely upset. Some of the men who have started to form a crowd around us, cajole the man into lowering the price (“C’mon, man, they’re students, cut her a break!”) and he walks away towards his car. We follow him, and I’m thinking he’s agreed to our price. I confirm with him one more time and he says, “Ok, 40 kuai a person but I’ll take you all the way to the border so you won’t have to get another taxi in Wuqia.” We agree.

A woman with a light pink, sheer headscarf and a missing front tooth joins Flo and Mag in the backseat. We’re on our way, and Flo starts to sing, “Everything’s gonna be alright.” We all start to laugh uncontrollably again. The comic relief is welcomed.  

I tell the man, “yeah we met some bad guys this morning and we just got ourself in a really bad situation so we’re laughing and happy now that we’re okay.”

About 30 minutes into the trip, he says, “Our older sister is going to Atush,” referencing the lady in the pink headscarf. We thought that she was going all the way to Atush and had a little argument about with the driver about it, showing the driver on a tablet how Atush was in the opposite direction of where we were going. The driver just says, “Oh ok the foreigners are getting out their GPS to tell us something we don’t know about our own country. They don’t understand that the road is the same. It’s okay they came across some bad people earlier so now they are having a hard time trusting.”

It turns out that our “older sister” just needed to get off on the road that we were going and would be going to Atush by bus. I don’t know why he didn’t just say that in the first place.

He drives us to a checkpoint with two uniformed armed guards, the last point in China our driver is allowed to enter. We ask the guards with their military camouflage if we can pass through this gate on foot and they say, “yes, yes of course.” So we pay the driver, and show our passports to the guards (check #1). “Do you see that red flag over there?” The guard asks me in Chinese, pointing to the Chinese flag in the distance, flapping in the wind. “You want to go to that building with the national flag.”

“Hooray, our last bit of China!” Flo says.

We look behind us and see that there are two other backpackers walking toward us. Two other western travelers are also trying to leave China today!

So we get to the building, the one with the red flag. The guards there take our passports again. Check #2. They walk off with them.

We wait for our passports in a waiting area while a lady from Kyrgyzstan with a pot belly and a black dress with white rhinestones on it screams into a cell phone in Russian and Kyrgyz and tries to exchange 100 yuan bills for 10 clearly fake bills of 10 yuan. She carries a huge stack of 10 yuan bills and starts counting them in the waiting area.

According to Chinese law, we have to hire a taxi driver (no hitchhiking allowed) to take us across the 150-mile stretch of land across the desert that lies between the Chinese border control, where our passport would be stamped with an exit stamp, and actually entering Kyrgyzstan. These drivers are hired by professional companies whose sole purpose and responsibility is to make sure that the people who have an exit stamp actually leave the country.

A taxi driver hanging out it in the waiting room of the customs hall offers to take us there. He’s asking for 130 kuai a person to take us to the Kyrgyz border. We bargain with him, trying to get him to go down to 100 a person, and hoping another person will show up who we can share the taxi with. It’s getting close to lunchtime and the border will close soon. But we wait, and finally the Kyrghyz woman talks to him (he was Kyrgyz-Chinese) and confirms with us that he will not budge.

We count our money: we have enough loose change that will support the extra 30 kuai a person. Finally, we agree and move through customs. Our bags go through an unmanned x-ray machine and we walk through an unmanned metal detector.

A man without a uniform, wearing an adidas sweat suit and a t-shirt, writes down our names, nationality, and passport number in a big paper book (check #3).  

At the next desk, a woman in a military uniform enters our departure slip information and flips through our visas, checks to make sure they’re not expired and that we can go to KGZ without a visa. She gives us our exit stamp (check #4).

We have to give our passports to the driver, and he takes them through another door. He will keep possession of our passports until he gives them to the guards at the Kyrgyz border, who will then give our passports back to us. We load the car up and I see on the car. It’s then that I realize this isn’t just some Joe Schmoe off the street, this is a dude that works for a private taxi company that takes foreigners across the border professionally. Like as his job. He probably has to give a commission to the taxi company and government, that’s why his rate is so high to take us a relatively short distance.

We start driving and the driver shows the guards at the exit gate our passports (check #5). We drive through a beautiful red desert, with snowy mountains in the background and pass a few villages with Chinese propaganda all over, with both pictures and Chinese characters and Kyrgyz in Arabic script painted on the walls surrounding each village.

Finally we get to the border, where three trucks are lined up at a closed gate with spikes on it. The border is closed for their lunch break. I change some yuan into KGZ som and buy some snacks and water. It’s windy and cold. Flo, Mag and I eat together, like a picnic on a bench. Then there is some terrible wind, almost a sand storm, so we go into a nearby restaurant and sit.

We decide then maybe it would be better to go straight to Osh tonight without stopping for the night. At this point, we are as spry as bunnies.

Flo is especially upbeat and energetic as well. “I just want to ride in a truck!” he says with a huge smile on his face.

Flo speaks Russian too, so he makes friends with the driver of the first truck in a long line of trucks that now stretches as far as the eye can see. More than 20 trucks are waiting for the border to re-open after lunch. We wait until 2:30 local time, and then the guards come out and take their posts. Our driver gives them our passports (check #6) and we give the driver our money. We grab our stuff. The driver says he told the guards our plan to hitchhike, and another taxi driver tells us they will only accept two people in a truck at a time. I get nervous, truly afraid that they aren’t going to let us. Mag is confident--there’s nothing they can do once we leave China!

The truck drivers have to stand next to their trucks with their hands up and against the side of the truck while the Chinese guards frisk them up and down, and other guards check their cargo.

They let Flo, Mag, and I walk through and we say goodbye to our driver and the guards give us our passports back. We stand next to the first truck and the Chinese guard even helps all three of us get into the truck.

Our driver gets in and the engine roars to life. We start driving. WE’RE FREE! I think we were all so sick of China at that point that we just wanted to leave it behind.

It’s a wonderful feeling being up in the truck, I feel powerful and big and unstoppable. We can see the whole landscape, and the engine roars with life. It’s like we’re the kings of the world. And no more China, no more Chinese, No more annoying hassels. Just KGZ ahead of us. It’s very liberating and exciting, I feel refreshed and energized, ready for a new beginning, a new country, a new journey and a new adventure.

Less than a minute later we’re stopped at the next checkpoint. It’s the last checkpoint before we leave China. We have to get out and show the Chinese guard our passport at a gate (check #7). But it’s the last check...on the Chinese side.

3 more KGZ checks, and wait for our original taxi driver but he says it could be a couple hours while his truck waits to be inspected, so we should try to hitchhike with someone else. So we wait and read, and we see a huge truck approaching. It’s a double tractor trailer, and knowing it’s going to be slow, we stop it anyway because we don’t know when the next truck will be that will be willing to take us. He says yes to taking us to Osh, and we happily climb aboard. The landscape is beautifully breathtaking: mountains, both snowy and green, and yurts and men riding horses and sheep and cows and horses grazing. We get out one more time for another KGZ check of our passports.

As we drive, we listen to music on my phone, and occasionally talk in Russian, translated through Flo, with our driver, who is Kyrgyz. He has a baseball cap pushed to the side, in an adidas sweatsuit and adidas shoes. He makes this trip twice a week, he says. He is 28 and has a wife that is 23, and he has 3 children, and he only does this for the money but has no idea what else he will do.

He shows us pictures of his wife and 3 kids on his phone, they are all adorable. He wants 8, he tells us. He beams with pride and happiness, a wide smile on his face while we look through the pictures.

He asks for a cigarette and looks so disappointed when Flo says they are Kitay (Chinese), so I give him a pack of the Marlboro Golds that I have in my bag, which I brought to give as gifts, and he’s pleased. Flo helps him open a window on the top of the truck and Flo helps him light his cigarette while he drives. They have a bro bonding moment over their Russian and cigarettes, puffing and blowing the smoke upwards.

They chat about random stuff and Flo translates for us occasionally. We stop right before sunset at a beautiful “photo” point, where you can see the road leading down into the valley below, and we stop for a bathroom break and the view is incredible, breathtaking. It’s freezing cold.

We get back in the truck and have some dinner, we share some of our naan but the driver refuses the rest.

It gets dark and I turn on my fast-paced music. Flo and Mag sleep. I sleep. We try to stay awake in solidarity with our driver, but I can’t. I wake up and he’s bent over the steering wheel, seemingly struggling to keep his head up.

About 9 hours later, we arrive in Osh and through our sleepiness we almost don’t realize where we are. It’s after midnight local time at this point. We get out of the truck, thanking our driver profusely for the free ride.

We negotiate for a 300 som taxi to take us into downtown Osh, but get lost trying to find our hostel, so we end up going to another guesthouse.

The bed is so comfortable. I fall asleep immediately.

Part 5: The best meal of my life

Tashkurgan -> Kashgar

The day after our bike ride, Flo, Mag, and I leave the hostel in Tashkurgan at 6:35 am local time and begin our day-long trip back to Kashgar. Before getting on the bus, we stop by the same place as yesterday for breakfast, and I was really excited because I saw yesterday they had pumpkin pancakes that I wanted to try. In fact, I was dreaming about them all night and they were pretty much the main reason I got out of bed this morning. When Flo walks in ahead of us, the Chinese girl standing behind the bar stares back at us for a moment and her jaw drops at the sight of us. Then her eyes widen, and her eyes shift back and forth as she shakes her head “no” nervously. Flo walks right up to the buffet bar and lifts the lid off one of the pans. It was empty. I ask in Chinese, “What time does breakfast start?” She stutters back, “It doesn’t start until 9:30 [Beijing time],” she stuttered. I don’t think I’ve ever been so disappointed in my life.

We continue on our way to the bus station, where our bus will depart at 9:30 am Beijing time. On the way, I see a huge, round wicker basket with steam coming out of it and hot coals on a grill in front of a local restaurant. I ask the man with bright blue-green eyes standing next to the grill what they have for breakfast and he says, “say moma and tangfan.” 

Say means vegetables and moma are steamed buns, so I thought that what he meant was vegetable moma. I tell the French couple this and we get six, but then he says, “Ok, now how much say do you want?” That’s when I realized it wasn’t going to be what I expected. After more yelling and frustration on both sides--it can be incredibly frustrating for everyone when two people don’t share a common language, well at least not fluently (sometimes it will make it worse when you speak their tongue but broken)--we eventually walk away with 6 moma and 1 box of say. 

The moma are plain white flour steamed buns, fluffy and warm, but bland. I also got a box of say, which is a spicy tomato sauce with peppers, onions, mutton, and beans to dip the moma in. Mag’s stomach wasn’t feeling up for it.

After going through the metal detector at the bus station, we wait in the parking lot while two Chinese men with roller bags stare at us relentlessly. I squat down and dip the moma in the spicy sauce and borrow a fork from Mag to eat the say. I drip sauce all over the place and my lips are on fire. It is delicious.

After the bus driver gets up from underneath the bus (he seemed to be doing some maintance work) and gets in the bus, which is the signal that we can start boarding soon, Flo and Mag go into powered-up mode: after a month of traveling across China, they got the bus seat situation all worked out. 

Mag grabs my ridiculously large brimmed Chinese tourist hat (bought especially to guard myself from the sun- thanks, dad, for instilling in me a healthy paranoia of sun exposure) and Flo grabs our bags. Mag runs to the front of the bus and grabs three seats in the first row, using my huge hat to save my seat, while Flo runs to the back of the bus and puts the bags in the trunk. We successfully claim our seats in the front and I let out a sigh of relief. 

We had been in the back of the bus the whole way here and it was a less than pleasant experience with all the road construction (read: extremely bumpy). A couple people try to take our seats and a verbal fight breaks out between one of the security guards and another man over seat assignments. Finally, the security guard makes all of us fasten our seatbelts and we’re on our way.

The bus flies down the mountain at top speed. The view along the Karakoram Highway is breathtakingly beautiful again, of course. The road is under construction for about half of the journey, where it is completely dirt and gravel. While we are being thrown around in our seats, we traverse through going through a beautiful cavern, deep into the depths of a narrow valley on the base of tall and majestically pointy mountains on all sides. For about 50 miles, the bus driver flies down the cavern on an unpaved dirt road and my head vibrates. I am thrown airborne out of my seat no less than 5 times. We have to get off the bus and show our IDs when we pass through security check-points along the way.

6 hours later we arrive in Kashgar. The bus driver says, “we’ve arrived,” but the bus station is nowhere in sight. He’s dropping us off on the side of some random road in the middle of the city. Luckily we see the number 20 bus, which we know goes to the neighborhood with our hostel. 

We get off the bus at the post office and cross the overpass when Mag turns to me, “Have you ever eaten at this place?” She points to a local Turkish chain restaurant called Dil Akar. I said I hadn’t. “How would you feel about fast food? I really want a hamburger right now,” she says. Considering her food poisoning the day before, this makes perfect sense. And considering our epic bike journey the day before, I succumb to the thought of some fried chicken and agree. 

Fully aware that the meal will cost twice as much as a normal meal in any other restaurant, I still have a strong desire to eat some Western food, which I haven’t had since May 10th, when I had Panda Express in the Denver airport.

So we walk in, sunburn, smelly, sweaty, and exhausted, weary from the bus ride. All three of us order the exact same thing: a spicy fried chicken sandwich with fries and a coke. I get strawberry juice and suck it down almost immediately. I wish there were refills. 

It is one of the best meals I’ve ever had: fried chicken with a nice kick, on white bread with mayonnaise, and crunchy fries with ketchup. Flo finishes his meal in about 5 minutes and gets up and orders another one- coke, fries, burger and all. Mag and I each get an ice cream- me a strawberry, her a chocolate. 

Turkish music plays loudly in the background. We can’t stop laughing- from the exhaustion, or the fact that we are stuffing our faces, or that we are eating Western food in a Turkish restaurant, I’m not sure which. But in that moment, all is right in the world.

After that meal, I feel so much better, like I’m a new person. We walk to the Kashgar hostel with a new spring in our step, smiling and relaxed, bellies full with deep fried food and sugar that reminds us of home. Tomorrow we will go to Kyrgyzstan.

Part 4 of the Incredible Journey: Biking to Pakistan (Almost)

On our second day in Tashkurgan, Mag, Flo, and I decide to rent bikes from the hostel and cycle along the Karakoram Highway to the China-Pakistan border at the Khunjerab Pass (Chinese: Hongqilafu Shankou).

The town of Tashkurgan is at 3,000 meters (10,000 feet) above sea level. The Khunjerab Pass is at 4,600 meters (15,400 feet).

However, Mag got food poisoning last night and isn’t able to join us. Flo and I eat a light breakfast a la carte at a fancy Chinese buffet and go to get two bikes out from under the stairs at the hostel. The spot is crammed with expensive-looking fancy bikes of other tourists who are cycling along the Silk Road and have stopped in Tashkurgan for the night. We find the bikes being rented out by the hostel owners and adjust the seats to our respective heights. By 8:30 am, we were on our way. My right pedal is broken (it was actually just a small metal rod rather than a pedal…) and the gear shifter is completely shot. I consider going back in the hostel and demanding a discount, but decide another delay isn’t worth it.

The air was cool with a comfortable breeze as we start pedaling down the shoulder of the highway. “Born to be Wiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiild!” I sing out off-key as we leave the hostel behind us, pumped with excitement for a day of biking.

We pass the first sign, a blue sign with white Chinese characters, which tells us that the Khunjerab Pass is 115 km (72 miles) away. We would also be making a 1,600 meter (5,000 feet) elevation gain. “We can totally make that!”, I tell myself. On a broken bike with a single gear? No problem. “We’ll bike there, which will take maybe 4-6 hours, but coming back will be super easy because it will be all downhill,” I optimistically think to myself.

We pedal and pedal, going uphill gradually, coasting downhill at some points, and it’s not so bad. Each truck, car, tractor, and motorbike that passes us honks their horn, letting us know they’re passing, they’re watching out for us, and they’re conscious of keeping us safe. We bike for an hour and take a break to drink some water and take pictures. The view is phenomenal. Huge snow-capped mountains and desert surrounds us on all sides. The Ice Mountain Father (Muztagh Ata), enveloped in a huge white glacier, is standing huge, tall, and formidable. He will stay in view behind us the whole time.

We bike for another hour, passing at least 30 workers in orange jumpsuits shoveling dirt and sand off the road. We agree that it must be a pretty thankless job to spend all day in the forbidding sun pushing dirt around, yet their jobs are essential to the roads survival, I realize. Without them, the road would be covered in sand. We say hello and nihao and essalamu eleykum as we cycle past. Sometimes they respond, sometimes they just stare. We stop again briefly and I drink the Chinese version of Gatorade; and nothing has ever tasted so good in my life.

In the third hour, the sun is so foreboding on my face and my eyes are starting to hurt because the sun is so bright. So I pull out a second bandanna and cover my entire face with it, including my eyes. I can see fine through it, and it protects my eyes from the sun, wind, and sand. We keep pedaling and make it up our first big hill. We’ve gone about 30 km (19 miles) in 3 hours (not including breaks) at this point, so we stop for lunch. It’s about noon now. We sit on the side of the road and eat naan, peanuts, and strawberry cupcakes. Flo’s face is bright red with sunburn and we both put on more sunscreen and lip balm. Trucks barrel past us, heading to the China-Pakistan border. As we sit on the side of the road, our bags and bikes next to us, the sun on our backs and the wind against our faces, Flo randomly starts uncontrollably laughing.

“What? What’s so funny?” Now I start laughing too.

He shakes his head. “Sometimes when I’m really tired I just can’t help but start laughing, so I guess I’m really tired right now…”

We sit and enjoy the view, breeze, sunshine, and brief moment of rest before getting back on our bikes.

We keep biking along the side of the highway and we see a sign for a “Tourist Destination Look Out Point,” which tells us that we are 30 km from the Wakhjir Pass of the China-Afghanistan border (elevation: 5,000 meters, 16,000 feet). We look at the map and are a little confused because it doesn’t look like the Karakoram highway goes to the Afghanistan border, but we’re excited because if we can’t make it to the Pakistani border, at least we can make it to the Afghanstani border. “I’m going to be able to potentially see Afghanistan today,” I think to myself. So, getting our second wind, renewed with energy at this exciting prospect, we keep biking. The highway kilometer marker tells us we’re at 1795 km now (starting from where, I’m not sure), so we keep biking and biking and biking, each km block passing as a reminder to me at how slow we’re going: 1802, 1803, 1804…

Finally, we reach the first town we’ve seen since we’ve left Tashkurgan. A huge police station garnered with big red Chinese characters carrying the typical propaganda messages (“Listen to the commands of the Party”) sits in the center of town next to the school, where we can hear kids laughing, talking, and playing. I see a store. I’ve run out of water so I run in and buy a bottle of water, sunflower seed cakes and two popsicles (one peach, one strawberry) that haven’t been frozen. It’s run by a Chinese guy who is surprised that I can speak Chinese and said he gets a lot of foreign cyclists on this route who can’t speak any Chinese at all.

We keep biking through the heat and sun, not resting much since at this point I feel like if I stop I won’t be able to start up again. We keep pedaling and pedaling and pedaling.

We realize that we’re definitely not going to be able to make it to the Khunjerab Pass today, but we want to at least hit the 60 km (40 miles) point, which will be at kilometer marker 1825. Meaning that we will have biked 60 km from Tashkurgan and will reach the point where the sign said that we would reach Afghanistan. At km marker 1822, we are climbing a big hill, and it’s hot and windy and sunny. Although Flo has been riding ahead of me almost the whole time at this point, he stops to wait for me and I pass him. “I’m so tired,” he says and I tell him we have to keep going, only 3 km left! He passes me again and I follow his back counting to 10 over and over in my head to distract myself from the fatigue. We finally make it to the 1825 kilometer marker and each collapse on the side of the road. “I know I said I was okay before. But now I’m definitely not okay,” Flo says. We drink some water. My legs are shaking.

My ass is so sore. My hands might be forming blisters. I now understand on a whole new level why bikers wear bike shorts and wear gloves. And have bikes that actually work. Especially gears and pedals.

Flo says, “I think my ass will kill me if I get back onto this bike.”

So we walk our bikes to the bus station we can see ahead of us in the distance that offers some relief in from the sun. I eat my unfrozen popsicle: sugar water that my body welcomes with relief. I also drink some coconut milk with pulp that claims to be from Hainan, the southeasternmost province in China. I marvel how we are in one of the western most parts of the country drinking coconut milk from the island of Hainan. I decide that I really should drink coconut milk more often.

We realize then that the sign wasn’t saying, “You’ll reach Afghanistan in 30 km.” It was saying, “you’ll reach the intersection to go to Afghanistan in 30 km.” We have made it to the intersection where, if we go right, we go to Afghanistan. If we keep going straight, we go to Pakistan.

So we decide instead to hitchhike back to Tashkurgan.

And then we realize. We biked for 6 hours to get to an intersection… (LOL… FML…)

BUT we did bike 60 km (37 miles) with a 680 m (2,230 ft) [thanks, Rox!] elevation gain. And it was a blast. Wouldn’t have traded that day for anything else.

We pay 70 kuai for the next car that stops, driven by a Tajik man. He tell us he has a 5-year old daughter who goes to Chinese school in Tashkurgan. He drives us back and picks up a couple with a baby on the way. When we arrive in Tashkurgan, he drives us into a parking lot seemingly showing us off to his friends, then invites us out to dinner about 10 times and asks for my phone number. I refuse as politely as I can. Finally, we make it back to the hostel, my butt and legs so sore that I can hardly walk. I hobble into the hostel lobby and collapse on the couch across from Mag and Flo hugs Mag for dear life. We’re so tired, all we can do his laugh. We’re back, exhausted but happy. “Good memories,” Flo says. I leave to shower (best shower of my life, I swear…) and collapse into bed at 8 pm.

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Part 3 of the Journey: Hanging out in Tashkurgan Tajik Autonomous County

See this post here for Part 1 and this post here for Part 2

This part of our story takes place in Tashkurgan (Local: Tashqurghan, Chinese: Tashikuergan), a Tajik Autonomous County in China. On this map, it’s spelled Taxkorgan (it's the green area). 

After leaving Hali’s house (near Karakul Lake), we walk across an expansive lush and green field on the foothills of Muztag Ata, with grazing yaks chewing happily and enjoying the grass. A clear blue sky, bright sunshine, and big white puffy clouds surround us. The wind whips around our faces and makes us shiver. We walk quickly, hoping to warm ourselves up against the frigid air.  

About 30 minutes later, we finally arrive at the white, 3-story building that Hali pointed us towards and I finally realize that it’s not a hotel like we thought. It’s a police station, with big red Chinese characters reading, “Dedicate yourself to the service of your country; Listen to the Party’s commands and you will fight a victorious battle of moral integrity and superior goodness.”

We put our bags down and wait by the side of the road for a ride to the town of Tashkurgan. We stick our thumbs out, though we’re not sure that this universal European symbol is applicable in Asia. We opt to also wave our arms crazily above our heads in our attempts to flag someone over. A car stops and I ask them if they’re going to Tashkurgan and they say no. “Oh ok, then where are you going?” I ask, since the direction they are going is only along one road that leads only to one place, which is Tashkurgan. “To this police station,” they say and pull their car over.

Next, a nice Audi pulls over and I run up to it, calling out the typical Arabic greeting, “Essalamu Eleykum!” The guy stares at me with a completely blank face. I realize immediately that he is Han and say, “Ni hao ni hao ni hao!” He says “ni hao” back with a poker face and I ask him in Chinese if he is going to “Ta shi ke er gan,” the Chinese name of Tashkurgan. He says yes, but he won’t take us because there’s a checkpoint ahead and they fine people who take foreigners up there, and he drives quickly away.  

Mag suggests that we go into the police station and ask them for help. Maybe they can waive the fine or something? So we walk to the front gate, which is locked and a long metal contraption runs along across the length of the gate standing with long, sharp spikes sticking out of it, and looking foreboding. We knock on the door to the right of the gate but there’s no answer, so we just stand there for awhile peering through the gate. I can hear the guys about 50 feet inside the gate wearing army fatigue speaking Chinese. There’s a camera pointing at us. Before too long a Han man with a buzz cut in camouflage army fatigues who looks like he’s in his 40s or 50s exits the gate. He gives off the air of a strict fatherly figure. I say in Chinese, “Hello, sorry to bother you but we’re trying to get to Tashkurgan and they guy said there’s a fine for people taking foreigners and we’re worried the bus won’t stop for us or there won’t be enough seats so we were wondering what to do,” I say nervously in one breath. He gives us the third degree about our stay, and then finally says, “There’s no checkpoint and there’s no fine.”

“Got it, Sir! Sorry to bother you!” At this point I realize that ten young men in army fatigue have come over to the gate to eavesdrop on our conversation. We walk back to the road and continue to flag down passing cars and trucks.

The next guy that stops is in a white Petro China truck, with a companion in the passenger seat. They look kind of Chinese to me and I was nervous about offending someone after the last “essalamu eleykum” incident, so I ask in Chinese if they’re going to Tashkurgan and the driver says, “Yes, get in.” And I say, “Is it free?”, and he said, “Just get in…. and yes, it’s free.” We’re delighted and clamber into their huge truck which has a back seat. We are so happy to get to sit in the back seat rather than in the trunk or in the back of a pickup truck like we thought we were going to have to do.

When we get in they start speaking Turkish to each other I tell them the essalamu eleykum story and they they laugh. We exchange pleasantries and ask each other about our families. Propaganda lines the highway in huge red billboards saying:

“Love your country, construct the country, support the law, follow the law, prohibit illegality, oppose criminals.”

It’s a beautifully indescribable drive as we drive higher and higher in elevation and further and further up the Pamir Mountain Range- clear blue skies, snow-capped mountains, and green valleys as far as the eye can see.

We arrive 1.5 hours later in Tashkurgan, a surprisingly large, sprawling town with a 6-lane highway cutting through it. The road is lined with lampposts, each hanging the Chinese flag. We see a big sign for the youth hostel, so we ask the driver to stop and jump out of the car. The hostel is run by 3 young Han girls and one young Han man, and a couple Tajik ladies clean the bathrooms. The dorm bed is 35 kuai a night.

I connect to Wifi almost immediately and I feel like a crack addict getting my fix after going through a 24-hour internet withdrawal.

The hostel is cold, dark and drab, with filthy bathrooms and simple bunk beds. The lobby, however, is nice. Flo comments on how the hostel lobby makes him feel like he is in a swanky restaurant in France. There’s a bottle of Jack Daniels on the shelf behind the bar and wine glasses hang from a holster on the ceiling. Slow, jazz music is playing and there is a pool table in the middle of the room. Couches and booths with tables covered in red cloths are all around. Other Western travelers taking the Silk Road journey and Chinese travelers going to Tibet slowly fill up the room. The stereo continues to play a mix of rap, French songs and Electronic Dance Music. And somehow I feel like we are in a Western country again...

Eventually we decide to take a walk, so we walk through the town, which consists of a strip mall with lots of Han business selling clothes, ethnic hats and clothes, various types of metal tools and pipes, and convenience stores selling simple household goods and snacks. We go to the post office in the center of town, which is next to an “Art and Cultural Center” and get stamps. I take note of by far one of the best propaganda messages I have seen thus far: “Be Grateful for Your Great and Mighty Motherland.”

We walk a little farther and find a big, grassy field at the foothills of a mountain range (we can still see the huge Muztag Ata glacier from here) with cows, horses, yaks, and sheep grazing as far as the eye can see. Flo takes a picture of the scenery, but there is a backhoe right in his line of vision. He comments that the view would be better without the backhoe in it, but then he says, “Well it is China, true to form after all.”

We sit in the grass for awhile watching the foreboding storm clouds and I see a man approaching us. He sits down next to Flo and asks him in Chinese, “Are you American?” I respond in Turkish, “He doesn’t speak Chinese.”

He continues the conversation in Turkish from then on, asking Flo his name and if he’s married. We find out that he is Tajik-Chinese. I ask if he can speak Russian, English, French, Japanese or Arabic, because those are the languages that Flo can speak. But no, he can speak Turkish, Tajik, and Chinese, so there are no overlaps in the languages.

The Tajik man invites us to his house, so we say, “Okay, just for a chat.” While we walk there, he tells us that he has 50 sheep and introduces us to his wife tending them. We go inside his house, which is a tent with a pipe stove in the middle and a small child’s hammock hanging above the sleeping area--wood planks covered with colorful padded blankets.

He and Flo share a cigarette while his sister-in-law makes us tea. He introduces us to his 3-year old son, 3-year old nephew, and 4-year old niece, who are playing together in the middle of the tent. His niece has blonde hair and blue eyes. They comment on the fact that I look Tajik, and how his niece and I have the same color eyes. She giggles and smiles shyly, burying her face in her uncle’s chest, but when she peaks out to look at us, her face is beaming, her eyes crinkled almost shut with her huge smile. We drink tea and eat naan, dipping the salty and garlic stale bread into the milky tea. It’s delicious and nourishing after our trip from Karakul Lake earlier. The guy kept asking us if we’re full, about 10 times, and saying “The tea is lacking” several times, which I now realize might have been a signal for us to leave. Regardless, he soon packs up the bread and tea, and he walks back with us, splitting off from the group to join his wife in tending the sheep.

We eat dinner at a Chinese restaurant because we’re craving vegetables, which aren't a common food in Central Asia. They have one of my favorite Chinese dishes: stir-fried eggplant and rice. A man accompanied by a group of men in army fatigue is completely smashed and keeps running in and out of the restaurant, his friends laughing and the women crying.


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