An Amazing Journey

One of the most extraordinary journeys that I have ever made was in 1988, when I was 19 years old, and I travelled from Pakistan to China across the Karakorum Highway. The highway snakes up into the Karakorum mountain range from Gilgit in Pakistan, until it reaches the Khunjerab pass, a mountain pass at an altitude of 4,639 metres, which acts as the border between Pakistan and China.

I remember that when we crossed (I was travelling with an English lad who was even younger than me and a very strong-willed Canadian woman), there was no public transport and we had to get a lift with local traders who had joined together to hire a bus that would take them across the border.

The first town in China that I stayed in was Kashger. I was very curious about visiting China, because it had always seemed like a very distant and exotic place to me. I was very pleasently surprised. It was a beautiful town with wide, well maintained roads and footpaths covered by vines to shelter afternoon walkers from the sun. In fact, one of the things that impressed me most about China was the fabulous infrastructure. In New Delhi, a major city in India, phoning England was time consuming, laborious and the line was unreliable. In Kashgar, on the other hand, 2500 kilometres from the capital, Beijing, making an international call was no hassle at all and the line was perfect.

The thing I enjoyed most was sitting in the market and drinking tea. Mind you, it was impossible to be inconspicuous! The local Uyghurs didn't often see Europeans and so they tended to stare at me in fascination as I sat drinking my tea. How ironic that I had gone to that part of the world because it struck me as exotic, only to find that I was the exotic one!

Have you been on an interesting journey? Why not tell your classmates about it on this blog. And even better if it is accompanied by photographs!