Golden dates and pistachio nuts, Egyptian silk and thin-skinned porcelain. Kashgar, along the fabled Silk Road, had it all – and still does. Its back streets are lined with traditional forges, bakeries, and wood carvers. Not much has changed in a thousand years….

For more than a thousand years, Kashgar has been a key oasis town along the fabled 7,000 mile Silk Road connecting China to the Mediterranean. It was a welcome respite between the vast Taklamatan desert and the daunting Pameer mountains.
It paid dearly for its coveted location.
The Silk Road may be lost beneath the desert sands, but Kashgar’s market is still the largest in Central Asia. It is a window into the past – a time when ancient caravans arrived with sugar and exotic spices.

In Kashgar they found a fertile oasis filled with peaches, melons, nuts, honey, and a bewildering variety of grapes. With apothecaries boasting herbal remedies for any illness, prescribed by some of the most revered physicians in the ancient world. Nowadays Kashgar’s traders stock more modern necessities and other local luxuries – the 21st century equivalent of gold and silver, frankincense and myrrh.

Small businesses like these line Kashgar’s back streets – most Uighur are fiercely independent and prefer to work for themselves. In fact, almost everything in Kashgar gets made the old fashioned way – from table legs to farming tools. There aren’t too many people in this world who can make a crowbar with nothing more than a hammer and a bag of coals.

Almost every corner in Kashgar has at least one bakery – nan is practically a local currency. It is eaten with every meal. A spiked stamp is the baker’s personal signature. It also helps the bread bake evenly.

He dips it in a thick mixture of chopped onions, black cumin, and white sesame seeds, and then plasters it the inside of the tannur oven until it is golden brown.

You have the feeling that the world could end and nobody in Kashgar would even notice.

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