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British Mensa Travel Special Interest Group |
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Silk
Road by Train The Silk Route was an ancient trade route connecting China with the Mediterranean. Predominantly silk went west with wool and precious metals going east. It was not a single road but had several spurs and alternatives. Whilst it came west to Rome, our Jules Verne tour followed the eastern half. We started with a direct flight to Beijing, where we stayed for 3 nights in a very pleasant hotel. The number of people on the tour was about 80, the space on the train, although it varied slightly as some people joined and left doing different parts of the tour. There was a pleasant mixture of ages (one lady had her 85th birthday, the youngest was a theology student) with some travelling alone, others with friends and relatives. For travel other than the train we were on two coaches. Whilst in Beijing, we went to Tienanman Square and then across the road into the Forbidden City. Also we visited and could walk along part of the Great Wall. It is many thousand kilometres long, and was the border of China. I am sceptical of the claim that it can be seen from space, as whilst it is certainly long enough, it is less than 10 metres wide, so would be very thin when viewed from space. We were also able to visit the houtons, one of the traditional areas of Beijing. These houses were arranged around courtyards, the roads were very narrow, with cycle rickshaws being used to get around. Throughout the rest of the city the traffic was very congested, and whilst there were many bicycles, there were more cars. For most of the time we were there, the direct sun was blocked by haze. Beijing still has many trolley buses, so this at least helps to reduce some city pollution. Many of my fellow travellers had been to China before, and they all said how much the country had changed since their previous visits, even some as recent as 5 years ago. At the end of our time in Beijing, we joined our special train. This was very luxurious and looked rather like the one used for Murder on the Orient Express. Each compartment contained two bunks, with a small washroom shared between two compartments. Although they were rather cramped, at least staying for several nights, enabled one to unpack ones case. As it worked out, we had an overnight stay at a hotel after every two nights on the train, where the facilities were quite limited. Overnight the train travelled to Luoyuang, near to which we saw an unusual house which had been built underground, with a large excavated courtyard. We also visited the Dragon Gate Grottoes or caves, along the side of the river Yi. When we think of caves here we tend to think of those which have been naturally formed by water dissolving the rock. These were not like this, but had been cut into the rock, with many including carved Buddhas. Some of the most impressive looked small from outside, but then had a huge Buddha inside, about ten times the height of the entrance. Unfortunately it was not possible to take a picture to show this. There were 1352 grottoes and 100,000 statues! The next stop of the train took us to Xian, where we saw the Terracotta army, undoubtedly one of the highlights of the tour. They were discovered in 1974 by a farmer digging a well. It is believed that they would protect emperor Qin Shi Huangdi in the afterlife. He was the first emperor of China, and the builder of the Great Wall. It is difficult for pictures to give a scale of the site. Each soldier is slightly larger than life, and one of the modern buildings covering them for protection is the size of a major railway station. For a price, one could buy full sized replicas and have them shipped home. In Xian we visited several other places of interest including the Forest of Steles, holding a collection of over 1000 stone tablets, all with detailed inscriptions. As we travelled west we visited the Jiayuguan Pass which is the most westerly point on the Great Wall. There is a large fort there and walking along the wall involves quite a climb. From there our train took us to Liuyuan. This is the nearest station to Dunhuang, which involved a 120 km bumpy drive (generally the surface of the roads was of a good standard in China, unlike some others in Asia) across the desert. From Dunhuang we visited the Magao caves, again man made with a large number of Buddhist wall paintings and statues. Being part of the desert, in the afternoon many took camel rides and walked to the top of the sand dunes. Much of the train journey was on a single track line, and it was quite common to have to wait some time for one, or sometimes two trains to pass in the opposite direction. There was a significant amount of goods traffic and many of these railways were new, with more lines still being built. Kashgar and its surrounding region has a predominantly Muslim population, although China has a secular state. Kashgar is one of the few places to have a statue of Mao, although he still appears on the bank notes, and his picture is on the Forbidden City. We left our train at Kashgar, and proceeded west by coach to cross the Tianshan mountains via the Turugart Pass into Kyrghyzstan. About an hour from Kashgar we came to the customs building, and although there were few people crossing the border besides us, with all the formalities it took over two hours to get through. As is usual with crossing mountain passes, we followed a river valley towards the top of the pass. However, about an hour past the customs (still in China), we found that one of the side streams was flooding over the road, increasing in depth and speed as we watched. We may well have crossed without being swept away, but the driver, wisely, was not prepared to take the risk, so we returned to the customs post. We then had to get special permission to re-enter as we had had only single entry visas. After a few more hours we returned to Kashgar for another night. Luckily the hotel in which we had spent three nights had space for us. The following day we retraced our journey, the flood having completely disappeared. We continued to the top of the pass, where we left our coaches, walked across the border into Kyrghyzstan (ex-USSR) and joined some new, or actually rather old and tatty, coaches. The road through this pass was rather rough on both sides of the border, and there was little traffic on it other than the occasional lorry bringing scrap metal into China for recycling. Fairly early on in Kyrghyzstan we visited some local people living in a tent. Apparently in the winter they moved elsewhere. We drove for several hours in Kyrghyzstan before the road had a junction. Eventually we arrived at Lake Issyk-Kul in the early hours of the following morning after about a 20 hour journey. This was, however, the only day where we did have unsociable hours. This was a nice modern resort and it would have been pleasant to stay longer, but we had another long journey to Bishkek. Our schedule had been to spend two nights there, but because of the delay we only stayed one night, so we only saw the city, the capital of Kyrghyzstan, by night. From Bishkek we took two local flights, firstly to Tashkent and then on to Bukhara, both in Uzbekistan. After a few nights in Bukhara we went by coach to Samarkand, and after a few days there back to Tashkent, where we got the flight home. In each of these cities, despite being ex-USSR, there was a strong Muslim influence. There were many mosques and madrassahs (religious schools). Generally these had had much repair and reconstruction, to return them to their former glory. How much of this sort of restoration should be carried out is debatable, but it was certainly well done. In one of the cemeteries this work was still going on, so that one could see before and after. In these cities some of the markets had domed architecture as well as the religious buildings. As many readers
will know, normally Islamic art does not include images of people or animals,
and restricts itself to geometrical designs. However there were images
of birds on the Mir
I Arab Madrassah in Bukhara. Samarkand was the capital of Tamerlane’s
empire before falling to the Uzbeks about 1500. In China the currency was the Yuan, while in both Kyrghyzstan and Uzbekistan the US dollar was acceptable. When visiting many countries it is useful to have single US dollars; this saves having a large amount of change in an unfamiliar currency, especially when visiting several countries. Uzbekistan now uses the Roman alphabet, having changed alphabets several times during the last century. Despite this, many books in shops were in Russian. As well as tour guides who were with us throughout (one for each coach), at each city we had a local guide, who was able to answer questions. Generally it was well organised, and we saw much not on the usual tourist routes. Throughout the tour we were taken to various factories and official shops, several of these were for carpets, but others were silk and cloisonné articles. Wooden folding bookstands were for sale in Uzbekistan. First published in VISA issue 65 (Feb 2006) More photos from China and Uzbekistan |