Charklik

Charklik/Ruoqiang, Cherchen/Qiemo every town in East Turkestan/Xinjiang has two names, the Uighur name and the Chinese name.

In the morning, we make the trip to Charklik, a trip that a lot of online resources/lonely planet say is not possible by bus and needs to be done by hire jeep.

The road is rough, they’re building the highway at frantic pace and we make slow progress.

For whatever reason, the sections of highway that are complete are blocked by mounds of dirt, our driver, frustrated with the time decides to drive over one of these mounds (as many drivers do), and we speed down the new highway for some distance until we reach a dead end, a mound of dirt our puny bus will not climb.

We have two options, double back and take the rough road around the dead end or, what we choose to do, get off the bus and using the detour sign as a makeshift shovel, remove this “minor” obstacle and continue on the highway.

Five hours later, we arrive in Charklik, the bus to Cherchen leaves the following day. Here a construction worker with a motor tricycle sees me looking for a hotel and drives me to one. They tell me they don’t take foreigners, as do several others. Shortly I see this same man again and try to explain to him that I’m not allowed. He doesn’t understand but takes me to another hotel, and waits for me. When I’m told no, I have him go in and talk to them. After some argument back and forth, he tells me to hop back on the bike and we head down to the only authorised tourist hotel, a very expensive looking place.

The hotel quotes a price more expensive than a week at the cheaper places, I tell them I want a share room, the girl quotes a cheaper price, I smile and tell her she’s cute and I’m a poor student, she makes it cheaper again. I tell her she’s an angel and that I need to eat also, she makes it cheaper again, 50 Yuan. I tell her forty because she’s a nice girl and she agrees. It’s expensive, but much better than the 180 she wanted. This place has all the luxuries, a toilet and a shower, with hot water. I could get used to this. I shower for the first time in a week and sleep on a real mattress.