The previous post is Yarkand (June 25).
The next post is Hotan (June 27).

Hotan (June 26) · Jun 29, 10:09 AM

We set Katie’s travel alarm to go off at 5:15 Beijing time (3:15 local), so at first we groggily get up in the dark. She resets the things after we figure out when we ought to get up, and we sleep for a few more hours. Packing up, checking out, and walking to the bus station doesn’t take long. The bus, however, leaves on Xinjiang time, not Beijing time, so we have two hours to kill, I think. I’m not sure. These days are blurring in the dry heat rising off the desert.

But I do remember the bus ride. We escaped the small town of Yarkand and left behind farmland to drive east through the wasteland. We met sandstorms and flooded spillovers, but the road is recently constructed and in excellent shape. Along the way we pass through a crowded market oasis — foot traffic, donkey carts, tricycle bikes, fruit stalls, and bakeries. Anyhow, we pass the time listening to Orson Scott Card’s Ender’s Game on Katie’s iPod.

We reach Hotan in the mid or late afternoon, but the sun is still bright and high. Nowadays it’s light by six and not dark until ten. We take a taxi to the one hotel mentioned in the Lonely Planet — the Hetian Ying Bingguan. They have decent common-bath twins. We settle in and hop to the east bus station to find out we will have to wait until tomorrow to buy tickets for the following day; tomorrow we will try to catch a few local sights.

Back downtown, five minutes from out hotel, we walk into a random Uighur restaurant for dinner. It takes some time to get across that Katie is a vegetarian — draws a crowd, too — but she ends up with a delicious egg & tomato noodle dish, while I get a chopped-meat pulled-noodle bowl. After dinner: internet. I find a post from another independent backpacker headed overland to Golmud. She’s in Hotan. Her post is time-stamped today.

Katie crashes in the room, but I wander out into the urban dusk for street food. Those streets are alive now. Carts are set up selling breads, meat, noodles, vegetables, juices, yogurt, corn, sorbet, and fruit. Everybody’s walking about. I pull up to a noodle stall and sit down for a good plate of warm noodles outside a mosque. Then — next door or across the street, who knows — I sit down with some guys and order kebabs. They are friendly muslims, except for the Pakistani wearing a baseball cap backwards; he smokes. I hang out for a while, later into the night than I planned. Even when I finally return to my room (which takes some wandering; I’m nearly lost), the streets are still lively. It’s a warm desert night.

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