4 ways

Breakfast Peking time 9am…we luckily made it on time for a buffet of pine nuts and collards, and assorted weird items including the squeeze-the-charmin bread and sweet and sour marmalade..mmm… We sat at a table of Westerners, met Josephine and David, a couple traveling by road from Britain. (They’re interestingly enough heading back to Pakistan…) In China they are allowed to bring their own vehicle, but not allowed to drive anywhere without a Chinese guide. We went to the bank, and to the airline office, and all for me to wonder what in the world do I do with 4 equally unappealing options. Margret decided she had to go on to DunHuang, it was the place that was calling her. She had seen a book on the table of the tourist office in the hotel, a book of the Buddhist caves in DunHuang, and tears came to her eyes. However, it was very far by road, and she would fly there and then from there back to Pakistan. My options were #1) wait in a random, dull, expensive hotel (by expensive I mean $25 per day, not like the West), in a random city I don’t feel any desire to really stay in for 5 days and then catch a flight back to Islamabad, #2) stay in Kashgar 3 days and after crossing the Chinese border at Tashkurgand, ride in the cramped jeep with the British couple over the nauseating pass to Sost (and then pray Ahsan could be there and drive me on to my flight in Skardu a few days later), #3) fly with her to bustling Urumqi and stay there in that random city I know nothing about and have no connections in a few days until the next flight to Islamabad, #4) cough up 6 or 7 hundred dollars for the flights and continue to accompany Margret on her expedition which she had thus far paid everything for me to do so. {Speaking from the future, if I was going to choose again, I would have chose #2, because I still think there are Sufis for me to find in Kashgar, and I would’ve loved to return to the Hunza Valley – now both places I’ll have to go back to…but maybe that for a reason too.} #4 was chosen.