1950s. Only after it had been completed in 1957 did New Delhi discover it passed through Aksai Chin, which India regards as belonging to its state of Jammu and Kashmir. The tensions that arose out of 219 running through contested territory played a major part in setting off the 1962 Sino-Indian War.
Soon after leaving Yarkand, I passed the turn-off for 219. My road south to Hotan was not nearly as rugged as that highway, but all around me was the unnerving country that makes up southern Xinjiang. The few villages here are merely tolerated by the desert, which in turn is watched over by brutal, elemental rock formations. Through the dust-caked right-hand window of the bus, the Kunlun Mountains, which form a natural barrier between Xinjiang and Tibet, were barely visible in the far distance. But the Taklamakan was everywhere, a vast sand sea stretching away towards each compass point.
A stiff wind picked up grains of sand, lifting them over the new railway line, linking Kashgar to Hotan, which runs alongside the highway, and blowing them across the road in steady waves. Skinny poplar trees, ubiquitous to every oasis in southern Xinjiang, rose ahead at infrequent intervals to indicate we were approaching a small settlement, the only relief from the harshness of the land surrounding us until the outskirts of Hotan appeared.
Hotan will never be the spiritual home of the Uighurs; that honour is Kashgar’s alone. There is no equivalent of the Id Kah Mosque, or of Kashgar’s vanishing old town. Yet Hotan has a far better claim to be the capital of Xinjiang than either Kashgar or Urumqi, because its population is still overwhelmingly Uighur. The railway’s arrival will inevitably change that, but for now the Han remain a tiny minority. Their smooth pale faces are an anomaly in a city where men flout the CCP’s ‘no beards’ policy and many women shield their faces from view.
Far fewer people understood Mandarin in Hotan than anywhere else I’d been in Xinjiang. It made getting around difficult, as not only did the taxi drivers fail to understand what I was saying, but they couldn’t read an address either. Most ignored or didn’t know the Chinese names given to the streets anyway. They navigated around the city via landmarks like the Juma Mosque and the nearby main market, which spilled out of its allocated space in the north-east of town on to the surrounding streets.
Every inch of the pavements around the bazaar was occupied by someone selling something. Piles of vegetables and fruit, clothes hurled on to carts which the women customers stood three deep in front of as they rooted through them, and everywhere mobile food stalls. There were giant vats of polo , baby chickens turning slowly brown in primitive rotisseries, kebabs and lamb on the bone, as well as the sticky walnut cake beloved by the sweet-toothed Uighurs.
If food determines a city’s status, then Hotan is the heart of Uighurstan, the undisputed culinary capital of Xinjiang. Much of what is on the menu is unique to the south, like the gosh kurdah , a big pastry filled with lamb and potato reminiscent of a Cornish pasty. Best of all are the rough hunks of lamb cooked slowly on a hook in a tonur , so the flesh comes apart with a gentle pull of the fingers. Served with a fresh naan embedded with thin strips of red onion, they combine to create a delicious and unexpected local version of a roast-lamb sandwich.
On Sundays, the residents of Hotan and the surrounding area gravitate to the market as if they are being summoned to the mosque. Early in the morning, the roads leading to it are a mêlée of motorbikes carrying whole families, donkey carts and the three-wheeled electric vehicles with rug-covered benches in the back that serve as buses in the outlying villages. By the afternoon, such is the press of people packed tightly together in the bazaar’s alleys that moving in any direction becomes a struggle.
What is on offer gives a clue to Uighur life in
Soon after leaving Yarkand, I passed the turn-off for 219. My road south to Hotan was not nearly as rugged as that highway, but all around me was the unnerving country that makes up southern Xinjiang. The few villages here are merely tolerated by the desert, which in turn is watched over by brutal, elemental rock formations. Through the dust-caked right-hand window of the bus, the Kunlun Mountains, which form a natural barrier between Xinjiang and Tibet, were barely visible in the far distance. But the Taklamakan was everywhere, a vast sand sea stretching away towards each compass point.
A stiff wind picked up grains of sand, lifting them over the new railway line, linking Kashgar to Hotan, which runs alongside the highway, and blowing them across the road in steady waves. Skinny poplar trees, ubiquitous to every oasis in southern Xinjiang, rose ahead at infrequent intervals to indicate we were approaching a small settlement, the only relief from the harshness of the land surrounding us until the outskirts of Hotan appeared.
Hotan will never be the spiritual home of the Uighurs; that honour is Kashgar’s alone. There is no equivalent of the Id Kah Mosque, or of Kashgar’s vanishing old town. Yet Hotan has a far better claim to be the capital of Xinjiang than either Kashgar or Urumqi, because its population is still overwhelmingly Uighur. The railway’s arrival will inevitably change that, but for now the Han remain a tiny minority. Their smooth pale faces are an anomaly in a city where men flout the CCP’s ‘no beards’ policy and many women shield their faces from view.
Far fewer people understood Mandarin in Hotan than anywhere else I’d been in Xinjiang. It made getting around difficult, as not only did the taxi drivers fail to understand what I was saying, but they couldn’t read an address either. Most ignored or didn’t know the Chinese names given to the streets anyway. They navigated around the city via landmarks like the Juma Mosque and the nearby main market, which spilled out of its allocated space in the north-east of town on to the surrounding streets.
Every inch of the pavements around the bazaar was occupied by someone selling something. Piles of vegetables and fruit, clothes hurled on to carts which the women customers stood three deep in front of as they rooted through them, and everywhere mobile food stalls. There were giant vats of polo , baby chickens turning slowly brown in primitive rotisseries, kebabs and lamb on the bone, as well as the sticky walnut cake beloved by the sweet-toothed Uighurs.
If food determines a city’s status, then Hotan is the heart of Uighurstan, the undisputed culinary capital of Xinjiang. Much of what is on the menu is unique to the south, like the gosh kurdah , a big pastry filled with lamb and potato reminiscent of a Cornish pasty. Best of all are the rough hunks of lamb cooked slowly on a hook in a tonur , so the flesh comes apart with a gentle pull of the fingers. Served with a fresh naan embedded with thin strips of red onion, they combine to create a delicious and unexpected local version of a roast-lamb sandwich.
On Sundays, the residents of Hotan and the surrounding area gravitate to the market as if they are being summoned to the mosque. Early in the morning, the roads leading to it are a mêlée of motorbikes carrying whole families, donkey carts and the three-wheeled electric vehicles with rug-covered benches in the back that serve as buses in the outlying villages. By the afternoon, such is the press of people packed tightly together in the bazaar’s alleys that moving in any direction becomes a struggle.
What is on offer gives a clue to Uighur life in
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