20 Sleeping Legs

Hello, after a very long pause visiting the internet. I am ALIVE!! And well in Karachi. Though you may have been worrying about me being here, due to the bomb blasts last week....there's nothing to fear, though you can not imagine the driving conditions here...me sidesaddle on brother Amrit's motorcycle racing through the night.
It has been fine here 2 weeks and 2 days now, but I'm going a bit stir-crazy. Every morning I step my way through 20 sleeping legs to get to the squat toilet. It's probably the longest I've been without running water...though there are mysterious times of the day when it does run and all of the water tanks and sinks overflow with water spilling through the house! Excitement all around.
Ikhlaq's father is patiently guiding me along with music and sarangi, and honors me with picking up the sitar...and I wish I didn't have to try to focus so hard and figure out how to replicate what he's teaching, but could just sit back and enjoy the beauty of it.
After the bomb, actually before the bomb, the door outside of the apartment was officially closed for me - as crowds and chaos ensued in the nebulous outside world. Then there was a strike that lasted another 3 days or 4, and even after no one wanted to let me go out and greet the sun. I'm very eager to take a vacation from my vacation, at this point. Finally last night after 2 weeks and only going out of the house once to try to get my ticket to oman, I was driven to see my friend Luqman (nephew of ustad mashkoor ali khan of calcutta, and friend of mine from korea! we both did time there). I had lost his #, so we had to drive around trying to find it, but we did, and he was very beautifully surprised to see me, and I met his daughter of 9 months, and his sweet wife and sisters and mom and gma.
Tonight I may do some shopping for material...I'm encouraging one sister to do some of her amazing stitching work for me to sell to friends back home - her work is beautiful, and if my idea works it will be the first time that she has ever had a means for making an income!! (More on the idea, email me if you have any interest in buying indian cloths!) Also heard something about going to Ala-Din, some game arcade that's all the rage.
Thursday is Ikhlaq's nephew, Sonu's concert at Alliance Francais; surely he'll play amazingly like the superstar he is.
Plan to go to oman for a week on the 1st, and then sometime the following week start to wend my way north and then back over the border that separates one land from itself....I have actually a lot more interesting plans than I'm letting on, but I'll have to save something for later... and still hope to update the last part of my china journey, when there's time.
For now, sending my love out to all my friends, hope all are safe, happy, healthy!

What Time? It's 9 o'clock AND it's 7 o'clock ??!!

XinJiang Autonomous Region (perhaps not very autonomous after all) has 2 concurrent time zones, making time itself seem a silly thing. One time is local XinJiang time, and the other is Beijing time - 2 hours ahead. Official things, like breakfast at the Chinese Tourist Hotel, and plane departures happen on Beijing time, and answers to 'what time is it' happen on local time. To make things equally exciting there are two languages spoken. I soon realized, as all the local Ughyurs get stuck with the worst jobs, all the taxi drivers are Ughyur. I got in a taxi saying, 'ni hao' and got a glare, realizing my mistake, the next time I got into a taxi I said, "Salaam Aleikum" and the driver replied with a heartfelt smile and "wa'aleikum a salaam". But, try to Salaam the Han nationals, and the same glare comes back, or rather a bewildered look as if we're speaking latin.
Watermelon season. Jujubes. Fresh flower peaches, grapes, apricot kernals.
We went to the shrine of Apak Hoja, the air of Sufis, somewhere beyond the mud walls. Akimjan, from the morning after the after missing official breakfast-time experience - peanuts cold pork rind and sugary white bread to dip in sweet and sour sauce, eeks..., guided us to China Air and to China Bank and back to China Air and suggested we eat chicken noodles at Entazaar Restaurant (delicious), took us to parts of the Old City, where the cobbler sewed my boots back together, lingering over the details to irk a bossy woman who then had to wait with her fists clenched for him to finish both of my boots zippers and back seam. There were some guys singing operatic 'happy birthday' across the way on the computers next to the W.C. We saw more bowed instruments, something called 'khoshtar' that had minah birds carved on the top. There were parrots in cages singing outside of the little grocery shops. Women wore skirts just below the knees with silk leggings and nylons over them; clicking high heels and scarves tied under the hair, men in mismatched jackets and suit pants, the pirs wearing Afghani style robes and long white beards.
Kashgar.

Kashgar, China - what was supposed to be our destination

So here we are in Kashgar - after a 4 day journey which went quite smoothly. How great to be in a "luxury" hotel ChiniBagh after last night invading the Khyrgustani family's house - paying brutally for it and having only a few bites of bread and yak cheese, and no bathroom but the bright jagged and dusty stones under the freezing cold of the full Moon. Sweet Muneera. I'm coming up with a story, weaving a past life tapestry of me as a Hunza girl falling in love with a XinJiang girl who came to visit and perhaps brought me back to China with her...but I couldn't stay, I missed the apricot valley too much.
We walked around the block to the old Id Ka Mosque from the 1400's. There was a 20 yuen admission (nearly $3) just to walk in, but it was lovely and peaceful, poplar lined and yellow archways. The to the KahLa (public bathroom - not a pretty site and required admission fees too!), into the handicrafts music store where a guy demonstrated the local violin which sits raised on the left knee facing out at arm's length, elbow holding it in place. There was even a double bass version, way cool. Talking calculators were passed over so we could type a price in, hillarious, really. At the little supermarket near the hotel I bought Colgate watermellon toothpaste (thinking of Daniel whom got me into the wonder of buying foreign toothpastes), a red bean bread, Nutri-Express drink, Piko chocolate bar, coffee ice cream bar, and this cute Pooh bear notebook entitled "you laughter is the suns i keep look for each day your voice is music to my ears your smile helps light my way" all for a dollar and a quarter - 9 yuen. Some of my Chinese is coming back. At least I can say, "hello, thank you, goodbye".
To the Pakistani Cafe for dinner. Beijing-Pakistan photo exchange happening, as a young Chinese girl asked a Pakistani guy how to eat the food. The Pakistani's speaking amongst themselves thought I was Russian, but weren't sure because I didn't speak. It was a far cry from the Hunza people who whispered guesses as we walked up the Karimabad hill - first Peshawar, then they guessed I was from Kabul! I spoke in Urdu to the Ughyur ladies in the kitchen and told them it was delicious. Sweet people everywhere, no hassles, no real out friendliness either - except maybe the boys outside of Id Ka Mosque trying to sell their golden butterfly pins. It's cold. Can't wait to use my watermelon toothpaste,now is the time!

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.

Mud House with Yak Dung Fire, Bathroom Beneath the Stars

Our first night in China, all in all, under the Full Moon, was quite a memorable treat. After our Hunza angel, Ahsan, helped us transition to a new driver and cross the Pakistani border...no easy thing...when we arrived to Sost one of the jeep's tires was a bit flat. The system of remedying this was to attach a hose from the engine exhaust pipe to the tire, with one person revving the engine, the exhaust would then flow through the plastic pipe into the tire; ingenious!! We had to have our names put on a manifest with the travel monopoly before going through immigration, the process of which I believe I already wrote about....okay, so moving along...we drove through khunjerab national park, to the tippy top of the pass with the awful sickening smell, and then arranged a new driver who spoke neither English nor Urdu, but fortunately a language quite similar to Turkish, called Ughyur, so at least I could count to ten with him! As we got onto the road the 100 word dictionary in the lonely planet travel guide our savior, still couldn't get us to an internet cafe. We drove about an hour and a half through a slow sunset on a deserted highway (the only highway in the province, I think)through chinese ghosttowns and dusty yellow plains with snow-topped mountains rising off in the distance.
Arriving at 'the lake' and the only restaurant thoroughly locked up and closed down for tourist season, we ventured to check out one of the yurts beside the lake. I stayed in the car and Margret went on the mission to see if it would be our home for the night. She came back dismayed, there was a strange man staying there and the owner wanted about $15 a person for us to also stay in there. The taxi driver made a swooping yelp to indicate he wanted to stay way across the other side of the lake, and off we went. We drove onto a rocky dirt path that shook his mini-van every which way, when mud houses started appearing the driver beeped his horn until finally someone appeared outside one of the houses. It wasn't a yurt, and there was no toilet, but it would do. The owners had run to the neighbors to borrow a stove which got assembled on our side of the house, meanwhile the very sweet girl (maybe 10 or 12 years old), Muneera, showed me across the lane to a pile of rocks where we could pee under the full moon. What a lovely bonding experience. (reminded me of other such bonding experiences, like in india as the ladies held up shawls for each other stopped at the side of the road so the truck drivers wouldn't stare us down, and then the 2am post-Happy Noodle Shop in Chungju, Korea with Becky and Rae, squat in the grass in front of the police station)
Inside, with yak dung burning and finally being able to take off my down jacket, we were offered some hard naan bread and lumpy yak yoghurt. The chai tasted like butter, and I couldn't bear to drink it. Margret brought out some treasures - a Swiss fruit cake which the locals didn't dare take two bites of, and Miso soup mix. Then it was time for bed, and the Khirgiz family brought down silk embroidered comforter after comforter to pile on top of us (the dung fire would inevitably die out). The driver was looking mighty uncomfortable about sleeping in the same room as us, but slipped his pants off nonetheless and pretended to snore after two seconds. I think I actually slept. We were woken for seheri, Ramadan breakfast before sunrise, but expecting them to bring food to us we missed the chance to eat. A couple hours later we were offered the same piece of stale bread from the night before. Before leaving, the lady of the house tried to pawn off her necklace and then her ring and earrings. We refused, but left some moisturizing creams and a pen for Muneera, who was still asleep. The sun was rising over the yellow plains and snow-capped peaks, the yaks' breaths misting in the full moon air...we were back on the Silk Road.

NYC go to Ikhlaq's Concert!! This FRIDAY - 28th - SITAR BLISS

This Friday night, virtuoso sitarist Ustad Ikhlaq Hussain will be performing at THE ARCH SPACE, 66 West 39th Street, 3rd Floor, at 8:00pm. He will be accompanied on tabla by Nitin Mitta...this is going to be a musical night to remember!
My mom wrote and said that Ikhlaq dedicated a song to me - how sweet, I was in tears reading that in DunHuang, China at Shirley's Cafe after experiencing the worst in sweet and sour eggplant and tofu - the french fries were good though. He also gave his bouquet of orchids to my mom - doubly sweet.
I haven't spoken to him yet to hear about the concert, but I'm sure it was amazing. I'm eager to reach Karachi and start lessons with his father, whose music is so amazing it's in his every breath, miraculously beautiful....

Over the Khunjerab Pass - into China

At the top of the mountains, with a dusting of snow in our midst, and turns that turned my stomach so sour I had to stop taking pictures, we arrived at the Chinese checkpost - the actual border. Though the air rightly should have been fresh and sweet, like Hunza, there was a sickening smell of old petrol and burning chemicals. It was the Chinese checkpost, perhaps some disinfectant; Margret said she recognized that kind of smell from eastern Germany.
We were on the other side, unlike when we left Sost and the Pakistan immigration officer had to run and turn on the generator to process our passport numbers, we were not in strict freezing cold chinese hands; no games, no pictures, no questions.
A young soldier hopped into our car to be driven to the next checkpost where our passports would actually be stamped. Me sick in the front with the window wide open, him without a proper coat shivering in the back (refusing to accept food or water or a coat from us), and the funny driver, quite a team we made!
An hour on we were at lower altitude and at the customs point where all of our bags were gone through, our precious hunza dried apricots confiscated, and all manner of being patted down had passed by the smiling female officer (unlike the pakistani side where we were separately taken into a room where the veiled woman reached for my privates and nowhere else, took me aback).
We then had to find a way to get to kashgar or out of the border town, tashkurgan, and to the karakol lake. We almost got whisked into a van with 10 pakistani guys, not my ideal sick as I was, finally were able to arrange a private driver for another $100 to take us to the lake, spend the evening there, and drive us on the next day to kashgar.