After a good night’s rest in the hotel in Kashgar,
We proceeded early the next morning to the airport by taxi.
The Kashgar airport is a modest one and I experienced one of my worst coffee at the airport. Let's not talk about it.
We were asked to lower all our window shades for the taxi & take off as the airport in Kashgar was also a military one.
The flight was a smooth one and I managed again to grab some further footage of the ground from above, to show the landscape that we flew over.
There was a simple throat swab CoVid test on arrival at Hotan airport
We then took a taxi to our hotel in Hotan. The hotel was a pretty old one hence I did not take any footage of the room. I liken it to a "3 star hotel" back in the day in LongGang in ShenZhen or GongBei in Zhuhai 10-15 years ago. At least that was my experience. It was okay but not on par with what I stayed in in Kashgar. As you (I) get old, you want to stay in better conditions for a hotel, LOL.
Rented a car with a driver to bring us to a cotton field.
Along the way we saw cottonwood tress and walnut plantations
We went thru 1 main gantry point where the police had 1 armed guard and that was a point where everyone had to show their ID and Health QR code.
Along the way we past at least 2 more roadside check points where Uyghur police glanced into the car to wave us to carry on, or to ask to stop by the road for further checks.
We were waved along on the 1st one, and the 2nd one, we had to dismount the vehicle and have our temperature and ID scanned.Since we didn’t have IDs but passports, we had to use a pen to record on a sheet of paper, our particulars, there was this one Uyghur policeman who even apologised for the inconvenience of the manual input.
We then reach a place where we could have lunch,
Again it was lamb skewers that we had, and I documented the cooks making some Xinjiang noodles, by "picking" the dough into the boiling water to cook
There was this "King of Fig Tree" nearby and we went to have a look. I didn't take any footage of such tree as what I saw didn't resemble a tree to me. It was a set of undulating wooden stems and branches in the center of a demarcated area, meant to preserve the tree.
It was a 40 mins (approx) drive from the lunch location to the cottonfield.
Unfortunately, our quest to find a cotton plantation met with a dead end.
A cotton plantation did lay ahead of a security gantry point.
Because we did not make any prior arrangements to enter this area,
which was outside of Hotan itself, we had to undergo another CoVid test. We did not have the time to wait for such a test result, in addition the police also advised that we had to seek out some foreign affairs office to get a permit to enter a cottonfield.
So we decided to head back to the city instead
And go to the Bazaar.
In Hotan city, we visited the bazaar area, where I took photos of some children.
And even made weChat friends with their mother so that I could transfer the photos of the children to her
We headed back to the hotel at about 6pm and had a bit of a rest before proceeding out to the Night Markets to have some dinner
The 1st night market that we went to, Fernando @FerMuBe did a live stream and that took some time, and we wanted to visit yet another Night Market, hence we skipped dinner to proceed to the next Night Market in order to catch the performances that we were told would take place,
The 2nd Night market was the highlight of the trip since it was a spectacle of life, culture and celebration.
People gathered in what looked like banquet style setting to have their dinner and watch the free performances which featured young dancers as well as senior performers who played cultural instruments and sang.
We could also see police presence , patrolling up and down the floor protecting and preserving the peace.
It was a coincidence that the XinJiang TV network had a cameraman and reporter there that night and she interviewed us.
The link to this short interview, I have included here,
• 4 April 2021 Singapore...
do check it out
We retired for the night after the performance and didn’t actually had a proper dinner, just bits of food here and there while I was taking photographs of the performances and then that interview, too much adrenalin and didn’t think about food.
The next morning, again at 5am, we checked out and proceeded to take a flight back to Urumqi where we transited for the afternoon and then back to ShenZhen.
Along the way while in the City layover, I met some school children selling
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16 окт 2024