04-06-2025
Along the ancient Silk Road, glimpses of the old and new
In the customs hangar where our minibus is being held
on the border between northern Pakistan and Xinjiang, in the far west of China, we alight and are duly processed. I am informed that someone needs to look through the full contents of my camera and hard drive. How long, I fear, will it take to look through 40,000 photographs? Fortunately, a brief scroll suffices.
After a night in the quiet town of Tashkurgan, I catch a bus headed north for the historic Silk Road town of Kashgar, a five-hour drive away. Along the old rocky road, we pass hundreds of excavators, cement mixers and steam rollers in the process of constructing a giant new road. The scale of the operation is enormous. All around us, the snowcapped Pamir Mountains shimmer in the morning sun.
A truck travelling on Pakistan's Karakoram Highway, near the China–Pakistan border. Photo: Christopher Wilton-Steer
Few places conjure up the
myths and legends of the Silk Road quite like Kashgar. Located on the western edge of Xinjiang province, it is one of the iconic towns of Silk Road lore, the gateway for Chinese traders heading for the markets of Central Asia and an essential stopover for those travelling into China's heartlands.
The legacy of this mercantile exchange is a strikingly diverse population that includes Uygur, Hui, Tajik, Khalkhas, Uzbek, Kazakh, Rus', Mongol, Manchu, Han and Tatar, the majority of whom are Muslim.
Travel through the Gobi Desert was made possible due to oases such as Yueyaquan, near the town of Dunhuang, in Gansu province. Access to water contributed to Dunhuang's strategic importance so that by the 6th century it had become a hub of commerce along the Silk Road. Photo: Christopher Wilton-Steer
Much of Kashgar's old town has been destroyed and replaced in recent years. 'The city changed,' one person tells me, 'and memory was erased.' But the historic bazaar, where traders, cooks, musicians and a variety of artisans ply their trade, still hums with activity.
Walking one day, I spot the old man wearing a pakol hat who I had sat with in the minibus crossing the border from Pakistan. He is communicating animatedly to a shopkeeper through a series of complex hand gestures. Next to him is a suitcase full of antiques, and it dawns on me that the old man has been going back and forth across the border, selling wares like the Silk Road traders thousands of years ago. I can barely believe it.
