Riding a camel with...

Two humps!

But let's not get ahead of ourselves. I met Abdul (yes, that's really his name) the tour guide, on Saturday afternoon to make arrangements for Sunday. He was concerned that my independent trip to the Sunday livestock market and bazaar would take too long and we wouldn't make it to the desert in a timely manner, so he agreed to drive me. I learned through his expertise that one can buy a "good standard camel" for about 15,000 RMB, the same for a good standard horse or cow. A good standard Donkey was only about 1,000 RMB. It was sort of like the Denver Stock show only less clean, louder, and with yaks.

Next we went to the famed Sunday marketplace where you can buy nearly anything you'd ever want (including, apparently, random dried snakes, lizards and rats to use in traditional medicine), amidst hordes of people. This market is considered the largest in Central Asia, and is where the European and Chinese lines of the Silk road met- people would bring goods from both directions to sell in this marketplace.

Afterwards we went to lunch, which is more problematic than it sounds- the Uyghars are Islamic, and right now they are celebrating Ramadan, which means that they fast from sun up to sun down. Which means that most restaurants in town are now closed between sun up and sun down. We finally found one, but also discovered that the desert site only 2 hours away from Kashgar was now closed to foreigners, so we had to go to a new site 4 hours away, which meant that our time frame had just been reduced. I ate my rice pilaf with a spoon, and we ran out the door to spend 4 Long Hot Hours in Abdul's black car without air conditioning. This was just as miserable as you would expect it to be until we hit something in the middle of the road.

This is a picture of our very flat tire:

This is a picture of Abdul trying to fix the flat tire:

This is a picture of the first repair place we stopped at after Abdul failed to change the tire, and drove 2 km so he could get someone else to fix it:

This is a picture of the second repair place we stopped at after the first repair place couldn't change the flat tire (notice the chickens and very small child randomly poking around):

They were closed, but let Abdul use their tools to change the tire. After a number of other mishaps resulting from not using the parking brake or blocks on the front tires along with parking on a relatively steep incline, Abdul managed to change the tire. Meanwhile, I amused myself by purchasing ice water from roadside stands. Remember that it is Ramadan, and Abdul was changing the tire for nearly an hour in 44 degree Celsius (more than 110 Fahrenheit) while fasting all day and not being allowed to drink water. He was also horribly embarrassed, so I refrained from making helpful suggestions. He's only been driving for 3 years, and I seriously doubt that he's ever changed a tire before, but I don't think that cultural norms would have let him take advantage of skills acquired doing car repair with my Dad and from a brother who worked for Discount tire. Also the fact that his lug wrench seemed to have the socket split open indicated that I would have been unable to help anyway.

Thus ends installment #1 of the Great Camel Adventure Trek! Next up, more pictures of camels. Specifically, Me on a camel. In the desert!