As a point of departure we chose Rawalpindi in the Panjab plains of Pakistan. Although not situated on the branch of the Silk Road which ran most directly to the Middle East and Europe, here, the northern Panjab, was a terminus of the equally important route which led from the Indian subcontinent to China. From Rawalpindi one heads north into the green foothills, leaving behind some of the heat and humidity which oppress the plains during the monsoon season. At Mansehra, one of the first towns in the foothills, there are still large boulders to be seen covered with inscriptions, edicts of the great Buddhist king Ashoka in the third century B.C. One is reminded of the crucial role Buddhism played in the early history of the Silk Road, with Buddhist missionaries and pilgrims, some seeking sutras and knowledge, others to propagate this religion, being among the first to pioneer the dangerous route.
After Mansehra the road climbs over a last higher range of hills and then drops down into the gaping and barren Indus Gorge. From here one follows the Karakoram Highway up the Indus Gorge. One of the world's truly prodigious feats of road building, this highway was built jointly by the Chinese and Pakistanis, and it is said that over 1,000 men died in its construction. It is easy to understand why as the massive towering walls of loose rock defy the building of a road of any kind.
After several hundred kilometers in these awesome, oven-like gorges, the valley eventually broadens and one reaches Gilgit, the principal town of the region. These isolated valleys of what is now northern Pakistan, although traversed by the Silk Road 1,500 to 2,000 years ago, were largely bypassed by later waves of invasion and consequently remained Buddhist as late as the 17th century. Today, the Islamic population of these northern valleys is largely Ismaili Shia and, being strongly influenced by the current Iranian world view, they are decidedly anti-American. Nonetheless, politics aside, they are by and large a friendly people and, in any case, less likely to be carrying weapons than the Pathans in regions closer to the Afghan border.
From Gilgit, in order to follow the Silk Road, one heads further north into the higher Hunza Valley. Until the completion of the Karakoram Highway around 1977, Hunza was indeed one of the most isolated regions in the world, renowned for its pure mountain air and glacial water and its people who reportedly lived to prodigious ages on diets consisting entirely of local fruits and vegetables. The arrival of the 20th century has clearly had less than salutary effects.
Tourism has arrived with all of its attendant corruptions, including the desire for money and foreign material goods. The Mir, the former ruler of Hunza, is largely absent these days and his valley realm is now becoming, for better or worse, integrated into present-day Pakistan. Even so, these are fairly recent developments -- the number of foreigners passing through has probably tripled within the last year since the opening of the Chinese border -- the greater part of the population still remains engaged in their traditional, largely agricultural pursuits.
Textile arts of a more or less traditional nature are practiced. Simple flatweaves are being made, as well as some yatak-like, long pile weaves, either for sleeping on or under. Perhaps most conspicuous are the carefully embroidered women's hats, with brilliant colors. Synthetic dyes are the order of the day; when natural dyes passed out of use I cannot say, but they are certainly not in general use anymore.
The Hunza Valley is dominated by the mountain Rakaposhi, rising to 25,550 feet, and the other surrounding mountains; the peaks of the Karakoram and Pamir are among the highest in the world. The setting is spectacular. The people of this isolated valley, the Hunzukuts, speak Burushuski, a language which is unrelated to any other language or any other language family, both in this region and in the entire world. This suggests to us that they are the remnants of a group which has lived in these mountains and valleys since before the waves of Indo-European or Turkic speaking peoples who from the second millenium B. C. on passed through here either as invaders or traders.
| From Hunza the Karakoram Highway climbs even higher toward the Khunjerab Pass and the Chinese frontier. At 16,000 feet it is one of the highest passes in the world traversed by road. It was an important Silk Road pass, particularly for the southern branch of the Silk Road and, even after the demise of the Silk Road, was used for centuries by more regionally oriented traders. Khunjerab in the language of the Kirghiz, the nomadic Turkic tribe which predominates in these very high plains and mountain, means "plain of blood" apparently referring to the formerly somewhat unsafe nature of the crossing due to banditry. Today the crossing is safe enough, if one puts faith in the bus driver and is not bothered by the altitude. The road, however, which on the Pakistani side is fairly serviceable, barring the occasional rock slide, rapidly deteriorates once the pass is crossed. Apparently, the Chinese expended all their energy and resources building the Karakoram road for the Pakistanis, a showpiece of Chinese-Pakistani friendship and cooperation, and were left with nothing to continue the venture on their own side. | 
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We were not so lucky. About two hours from the pass, one reaches the Chinese customs and immigration post. After formally entering China we found no onward transportation. Buses coming from Kashgar were understandably late and a large number of Turkestani Hajjis returning from Mecca who arrived simultaneously, had put a strain on the available transportation facilities. This border post, Pir Ali, although surrounded by spectacular mountains, was rather high (14,500 ft.), cold, dusty, and without much food, so after two days we'd had enough and managed to bribe a Chinese Army officer into lending us his jeep for the trip to Kashgar.
Thus provided, we made the distance in only two days. Along the way, we passed through stunning country -- high yayla (pastures) under the foot of Muztagh (24,500 ft.) and Kongur Shan (25,500 ft.). Here there were large numbers oi Kirghiz with their yurts and herds, one camp of which we were able to visit. These Kirghiz made extensive use of felt applique work both for the yurt covering and for carpeting for the interior of the yurt. When used on the ground such ornamented felts are called sirmak. They also weave a type of warp-faced flatweave for ground covering which they call palas. The yurts are bound together by both wide and narrow tentbands, the wider being as much as a foot wide. I found the Kirghiz to be producing a wider range of woven products than what I had previously seen among the Kazaks of Xinjiang,who seem to produce mainly felts, narrow tentbands, and needlework embroideries. I saw no evidence of natural dye use during our short visit with the Kirghiz. We spoke with them in broken Turkish-Kirghiz and they were very interested to hear that there are some Kirghiz in Turkey. The Bactrian (two-humped) camel is still the primary means of transport for the Kirghiz in this region, and it seemed to be, in fact, better adapted than the jeep or any other motorized vehicles to the existing "road." Nevertheless, with much pushing of the jeep, rolling of fallen boulders, and occasional waiting for Chinese blasting to clear away rockfalls, we eventually made our way down from these spectacular mountains into the great Tarim Basin, the vast and often featureless Taklamakan Desert.
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Kashgar is a huge oasis on the very western fringes of the Taklamakan Desert. The flat, green watered plots of the oasis spread for so many miles in every direction that one almost forgets that there is a far, far vaster desert out there. Kashgar is the bazaar center for all the towns and villages of the surrounding countryside, and on bazaar day it is quite a spectacle -- more thronged, more varied types of people and goods, more animals (donkeys, camels, sheep, goats), more dusty, and more the atmosphere of a traditional Central Asian bazaar than any other I've seen. There are merchants in the bazaar with carpets, both pile and felted, as well as kilims palas. Most carpets are new and most of the pile carpets have variations on traditional East Turkestan designs -- pomegranate, vase -- although renditions of foreign designs -- Caucasian, Persian, and Turkish -- are also to be found. The dyes are neon, luminescent, their sole virtue being that they seem to fade quite quickly; a 10 to 15 year old carpet thus takes on a somewhat antiquated appearance. The foreign tourists or |  Uyger carpet dealers in Kashgar carpet bazaar, here with a stock of "antique" carpets, usually 10 to 40 years old at most |
From Kashgar it was on to Hotan, a long and dusty bus trip across the desert traversing several smaller oases along the way. The present road follows exactly the old southern branch of the Silk Road, going first to Yerkent (Yarkand), then on to Kargilik and Hotan. The Taklamakan Desert is a vast oval rimmed by high, snow-covered peaks (the Tien Shan in the north and the Kunlun Shan in the south) so that, although virtually no rain falls in the desert, all around the rims plentiful run off from melting snow enters the flat desert at intervals of 50 to 100 miles, allowing for the establishment of oases towns. Some of these towns were subsequently swallowed by the desert when runoff decreased, rivers shifted, or water channels fell into disrepair. The larger oases, Particularly Hotan, were powerful kingdoms and centers of culture, civilization, and religious learning (primarily Buddhist and Manichian) in their time. Although many remarkable and well preserved discoveries have been made, nobody doubts that there is still much remaining hidden beneath the sands of the Taklamakan.
Hotan today, as well as Kashgar, is primarily Uygur Turk. The earliest oasis kingdoms along the Silk Road in the Taklamakan region were inhabited by Indo-European speaking people, known to the contemporary Han Dynasty Chinese (206 B.C. - 220 A.D.) as the "Big Moon People." These were probably people known to the West at that time as Saka and identified in English as Scythian. The Uygur Turks, however, have been by far the inhabitants of longest standing, first as Buddhists and later as Muslims. It is their culture which distinguishes all of the oasis towns of East Turkestan, and it is disturbing to see the degree of Sinicization which is taking place today. Even remote Hotan is almost 50% Han Chinese in town, although the surrounding countryside remains almost entirely Uygur. The capital of Xinjiang (Sinkiang), Urumchi, may be as much as 80% Chinese by now. Despite a policy of official recognition of minority cultures, one senses that the Uygurs -- as well as Kazaks, Kirghiz, and other Turkic groups -- are second class citizens soon to become minorities in their own homeland and socalled autonomous region (as in Xinjiang-Uygur Autonomous Region).
The present day Hotan Oasis, like Kashgar, seems quite expansive, but at the edges one enters onto sandy absolute desert. Two of the ancient buried cities lie near these. Very little remains to be seen above the surface (as is often true with archeological sites in any case), but the sand is littered with shards of 1,800-2,000-year-old pottery. There are larger and more famous sites, those discovered by Aurel Stein in the early part of this century, at some distance from Hotan in the desert. These, however, are difficult to reach and find, even today with a jeep, and the Chinese rarely give permission for such ventures. Hotan itself is still officially closed and permission must be obtained to visit.
 | The present day carpet scene in Hotan is little different from Kashgar. The new folk production for the local market is as described already. When we say local market it should be qualified by stating that the folk, i.e. home produced, nonexport carpets woven in Hotan are sold to Uygurs all over Xinjiang, particularly in the capital, Urumchi. Hotan has traditionally been the most prolific center for carpet weaving in East Turkestan, and that remains true today. Most of the privately produced carpets being woven for sale to Uygurs or others anywhere in Xinjiang are woven in the Hotan area. Genuinely old carpets were not to be seen. Even in the mosques one sees nothing older than 10 or 15 years. There is a large government workshop-factory in Hotan where lots of somewhat pastelish carpets with mostly non-indigenous Persian and Caucasian type designs were being woven for someone somewhere.
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In the future, one may be able to follow the southern branch of the Silk Road past Hotan to the east all the way to where it rejoins the northern route, either at Dunhuang or Turfan. Such a trek traverses extreme desert conditions, with little or no road much of the way, and today would require extensive permits from the Chinese authorities.
Our time was running out, so we had to proceed to Urumchi, the capital and principal city of Xinjiang. Urumchi has become a large, modern, industrial city and is somewhat watered down in terms of Uygur-Turkestani culture, due to the tremendous influx of Han Chinese. The museum, however, is a treasure trove for those interested in ancient textiles, many of them of great age in surprisingly good condition, and apparently mostly unpublished and little known to the outside world. This museum presents a great untapped potential for textile scholarship.
We flew out from Urumchi, passing in five hours from the arid, bracing climate of Turkestan to the lush, muggy green of south China at Guanzhou (Canton), a journey that in Silk Road days would probably have taken at least eight months.
The author, Chris Walter (facing) |  |
