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| Silk Road Adventure |
Chuck Lee |
Photographing
in remote areas of western China twelve time zones away, with a small,
independent group of friends can be an adventure with unantici-pated
rewards. As we did two years ago, Carol and I teamed up with Club
members Miranda Chin and John Telford, and friend Jimmy Wang to plan
a China trip itinerary. This time we added Club mem-ber Cezary Raczko,
raised the bar a few notches, and targeted China’s western most province,
Xinji-ang, for a month-long trek of the Silk Road that once linked
the Roman and Chinese empires. Anticipating colorful autumn foliage
in snow capped mountains, nomads migrating to winter valley pastures,
and desert heat subsiding, we chose the fall as our time to travel.
Miranda negotiated our developed
itinerary over the Internet with the Chinese tour guide we had used
in 2004. Although he spoke no English, Mr. Gao had proven his ability
to expose us to the local people, places, and experiences that few
foreigners have the opportunity to see and photograph.
From
the outset, the trip proved a physical chal-lenge. Our first day began
at 6 a.m. Before flying to Xinjiang, we drove to a wilderness area
outside of Beijing and for two hours we struggled up a rough-trailed
1,200 foot high mountain to photograph an old section of the Great
Wall said to be favored by photographers and frequented by only the
heartiest tourists. The tone was set. This was not going to be a walk-in-the-park
vacation. We knew, however, that if we survived, we would have an
adventure of a lifetime and may just come away with a few unique pictures.
That evening we flew four hours
across China to Urumqui, the capital of Xinjiang Uyghur Autono-mous
Region, a city of 2.8 million, 2,953 feet above sea level located
in the prairie valley of the Tian-shan Mountains. Urumqi would serve
as our opera-tional base for photographing Xinjiang, the vast hin-terland
of Eurasia covering one sixth of China’s total territory and sharing
borders with eight countries.
The
next night we flew two hours to Kashgar, the western-most town in
China, with the nearby bor-ders of Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Afghanistan,
and Pakistan. Kashgar is the most important city on the Silk Road
and the epicenter of the Uyghur culture. Its persona is predominantly
Islamic, as 90 percent of its quarter-million population is Sunni
Muslim. The seven million Uyghurs living in Xinjiang represent the
largest among a number of minority tribes in the autonomous region.
They have distinctive facial features -- big or deep eyes and a high
nose – speak a Turkic language, and use an Arabian-based phonetic
alphabet written right to left.
The famous Kashgar Sunday livestock
bazaar was an anticipated highlight of our China trip. The enor-mous
bazaar has been a major regional attraction for the past 1,500 years,
with farmers and mer-chants bargaining over camels, sheep, goats,
cattle, and donkeys, together with all manner of crafts and goods.
Kashgar was indeed a special
place not to be missed. It is a popular saying that “You haven’t been
to Xinjiang, unless you’ve been to Kashgar”. Being flexible and in
control of our itinerary, we wanted to savor the area. To that end,
Cezary noted that his pre-trip study of tour book photos had spotted
a “must-see” site in suburban Kashgar – the Shrine of Hoa Appak and
tomb of the Fragrant Concubine erected in 1640 – taken from a most
interesting graveyard. We asked our tour guide to drive us there in
the last afternoon so we could scout it out. Our decision was unanimous
– the site was a winner. We would return before dawn the next morning.
Positioning our tripods atop an elevated Muslim sarcophagus at the
far end of the adjacent cemetery, and using other tombs as foreground,
we were able to capture the decorative-tiled mausoleum in the magic,
golden light of sunrise.
Over the next 19 days we took
four more domestic flights. On several occasions, upon arriving at
a remote community airport, we still had a five or more hour drive
to reach our destination. We spent a total of six nights in two rural
Tuwa villages in the northwest corner of China -- one on the border
of Kazakhstan, 25 miles from Mongolia and 40 miles from Russia. For
three of those days we photo-graphed the nomadic Kazakh people in
their fall migration from the high mountains to the lower valleys
wandering together with their grazing stock. The women rode horses,
usually carrying a baby, while the men drove the herds with the help
of their herding, hunting dogs -- their homes packed on the backs
of their camels.
Four days were spent in desert
oasis locations in the hot Turpan basin nearly 500 feet below sea
level. For over 2,000 years, residents there have grown grapes for
raisins, watermelons, and cotton, and irrigated their land through
a series of connected wells and underground canals several thousand
miles long that channel the melted snow from distant surrounding mountains.
Our stay in what other travelers
have called the “land of magic and wonder” was indeed an adventure.
The following are a few of our observa-tions: People generally were
receptive to our taking their picture. Food, on the whole, was very
good, although the group did experience several episodes of intestinal
disruption that required our prescription medicine to abate. Lodging
also was very good, especially in the larger towns. In the remote
villages, however, accommodations were primitive but acceptable for
a short period and far better than were generally available for the
local population. In the remote villages there was always electricity
and indoor plumbing, but not always heat or hot water. It was cold
in the mountains in late October and early November, but we were given
extra blankets. We rose before dawn almost every morning for sunrise
opportunities that turned out to be rarely favorable but frequently
very cold. And surprisingly, for more than two weeks we did not see
any others of European origin. We clearly had ventured down the Silk
Road less traveled.
What began as a test of our stamina
continued to be physically challenging at times, causing us to endure
stresses we did not envision when we created our adventure itinerary.
However, by suck-ing it up and pressing on we realized a personally
rewarding experience far greater than we had ever imagined and an
opportunity to witness and capture scenes of vanishing lifestyles
we shall never forget. And, oh yes, we came away with more than a
few unique pictures -- making it all worth while.
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North Bethesda Camera Club
The Lens and Eye
March 2007
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