The New Dominion

The whole concept of “traveling in Xinjiang” often comes up in the minds of only the most intrepid explorers, people who truly want to head away from the conventional China destinations of Shanghai, Beijing, and Xi’an. My own accidental discovery of Xinjiang occurred after a friend and I decided to go as far away as possible from our 4-month home in Jiangsu province. A quick glance at a map of China and some simple logic brought us to Xinjiang a few days later.

However, even in a place as far flung as Xinjiang “conventional” destinations can form and routes that originally seemed “off the beaten path” are suddenly shared with other tourists, both Westerners and, nowadays, hordes of baseball-cap toting, middle-aged, pudgy Chinese tourists dutifully following some twenty-something year old tour guide with a flag and a megaphone. Kashgar, for example, once touted as a remote backpacker’s paradise, is now succumbing to a burgeoning tourist industry, an expanding “new town” which threatens the medieval-ish old city, and a comprehensive tiling project which promises to improve Kashgar’s dirty alleys with the studded concrete tiles you can find on every other sidewalk in every other city everywhere in China.

But there is another part of Xinjiang that remains relatively untrodden, and that is the southern fringe of the Taklamakan. For now, the cities in this area remain left out of the railways that link Urumqi to Kashgar, exempting them from the influx of population and tourists that have left their mark on more easily accessible destinations. They retain the remote charm that once was attributable to Xinjiang in general, and remain rather stalwart centers of Uyghur traditional culture. These destinations are ideal for travelers and researchers who are searching for a better preserved Uyghur cultural context, but the downside of heading so far away from the beaten path is that there is little practical information about these cities to access.

Except for one website, which I had the luck of stumbling upon recently. First, some disclosure: I do acknowledge the irony of criticizing the negative effects unleashed by an unchecked, disrespectful tourist deluge, then going on to share a website that enables tourists to explore an “untouched” area. But I’ll say here that I have enough faith in my readers to believe that none of you are industry or development tycoons planning on dragging hordes of tourists through the homes of Uyghurs or building a giant resort on top of a Uyghur residential area. Call it blogger’s arrogance, to be so presumptuous about our readership. But I really don’t think I’m off the mark!

The site is called, simply enough, “Central Asia Traveler,” and is run by a person who goes by “Cat,” the acronym of aforementioned page title. Check it out when you have the chance. CAT has incredibly detailed and exhaustive travel information for the cities of Niya/Minfeng, Cherchen/Qiemo, Charkilik/Ruoqiang, Keriya/Yutian, and Khotan/Hetian, cities for the most part neglected by tourists and guidebooks alike. As far as I’m concerned, you’ve got a winning destination of its got completely different Chinese and Uyghur names, which seems to be the case for most Nanjiang cities.

Furthermore, the CAT website is linked frequently to Cat’s flickr website, a similarly exhaustive album that gives a pretty decent visual summary of these cities. Who wouldn’t want to go to these places?

A Mosque in Keriya, Xinjiang

Montage of Cherchen, Xinjiang

Niyaliqs arrive at the Sunday Bazaar

So what are you waiting for? Collect the information you need and head on down to Nanjiang!