Insight Guides Silk Road (Travel Guide eBook)

Insight Guides

• Publisher: Insight
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN: 9781786715937
• eBook ISBN: 9781786716996
• Topic: Desarrollo personal
• Subtopic: Viajes

Insight Guide The Silk Road is the complete illustrated guide to one of the world's ultimate travel adventures. Passing right through the heart of Asia, this ancient trade route traverses a quarter of the globe from the heart of China to the Mediterranean via a vast, inhospitable expanse of mountains and desert. The guide covers all the sights along the way across 13 countries and 6 time zones, with authoritative chapters on the Silk Road's history and culture to put it all into context.

Inside Insight Guide The Silk Road: A fully-overhauled major new edition by our expert Silk Road author. Stunning, specially-commissioned photography that brings the countries along this evocative route to life. Highlights of the Silk Road's top attractions, including the great city of Isfahan, the ancient splendor of Persepolis and China's Terracotta Army in our Best of the Silk Road. Descriptive country-by-country accounts cover the whole route from China to Turkey by way of the 'Stans of Central Asia and the geopolitical nerve centres of the Middle East. Features detail silk production, the ancient treasures that have been discovered along the route, and the colourful bazaars - a reminder of the Silk Road caravanserais of the distant past. Detailed, high-quality maps throughout will help you get around and travel tips give you all the essential information for planning the trip of a lifetime.

About Insight Guides: Insight Guides has over 40 years' experience of publishing high-quality, visual travel guides. We produce around 400 full-colour print guide books and maps as well as picture-packed eBooks to meet different travellers' needs. Insight Guides' unique combination of beautiful travel photography and focus on history and culture together create a unique visual reference and planning tool to inspire your next adventure.

'Insight Guides has spawned many imitators but is still the best of its type.' - Wanderlust Magazine

Xinjiang

Xinjiang is archetypal Silk Road terrain: deserts, mountains, lost cities, bazaars, but with many surprises like the vineyards of Turpan.

Main Attractions

Hami

Turpan

Flaming Mountains

Bezeklik

Kuqa

Khotan

Kashgar

Lake Karakul

Xinjiang Autonomous Region Museum

Heavenly Lake

Xinjiang is China’s largest province, accounting for one-sixth of the nation’s territory and, at 1,660,000 sq km (640,000 sq miles), equalling almost exactly the land areas of France, Germany, Spain and the UK combined. At a mere 20 million, the population is sparse but demographically diverse. In 1949, the inhabitants of this part of China were mainly Turkic Muslim, with Uighurs predominating in the south and Kazakhs in the north. Han Chinese, almost all of whom were officials or merchants from China proper to the east of the Jade Gate, numbered between 3 and 4 percent of the total population.

Subash Mosque near Lake Karakul.

Getty Images

The ruins at Gaochang Gucheng.

Shutterstock

Since 1949, Han Chinese have migrated to Xinjiang in large numbers, and are now the second-largest ethnic group in the province, comprising around 41 percent of the total, compared to the Uighur at 45 percent. Smaller groups – ranging from the Kazakhs at 7 percent and the Hui at 5 percent down to the Persian-speaking Tajik minority at Tashkurgan in the far west, numbering a mere 0.2 percent of the population – are numerically less significant.

Xinjiang has been of immense strategic significance to China for more than 2,000 years. From about the 2nd century BC, when Han China first began to extend its influence over the area, it was called Xiyu or “Western Region”. For centuries it was known in the West variously as Eastern Turkestan or Chinese Turkestan. Following the Qing re-conquest of the area in 1884, it was renamed Xinjiang or “New Frontier” and given provincial status, before becoming the Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region in 1955.

The vast area is dominated by some of the highest mountains and most arid deserts in the world. In the east, the area around Hami and Lop Nur has long been strongly influenced by nearby China proper, and is dominated by Han and Hui Chinese with a scattering of Uighurs. North of the Tian Shan, Urumqi is an overwhelmingly Han Chinese city, while the Dzungarian Steppe and Altai Mountains are home mainly to the province’s Kazakhs. The Tarim Basin in the southwest, distinguished by a series of oasis towns surrounding the central Taklamakan Desert like beads on a necklace, is dominated by Uighur, though both Han and Hui continue to settle throughout the area, especially in the larger cities.

Entering and leaving Xinjiang

Travellers leaving China via Xinjiang for points further west on the Silk Road should apply for onward visas in their home country or in Beijing. It is not possible to get visas for any of the neighbouring countries on arrival at the land border. Check security advice for all routes. (See Travel Tips, click here, for more information on transport in China.)

Entering Xinjiang from Gansu is easy via either the Lanxin Railway, or National Highway 312.

Highway 219 runs south from Karghalik before heading across the Tibetan plateau towards Lhasa. It remains officially closed to foreign visitors, though increasing numbers of independent motorists and bus passengers do manage to take it.

The difficult, largely unpaved route from Dunhuang to Charklik on the Southern Silk Road in Xinjiang, is not recommended and is often snowbound in winter.

There are four efficient overland crossings between Xinjiang and Kazakhstan at Korgas Alashankou/Dostyk, Dulata/Koljat and Bakhty., as well as a twice-weekly rail link at Alashankou to Almaty.

Two roads lead to Kyrgyzstan, the relatively easy Irkeshtam Pass to Osh and the less-frequented Torugart Pass to Naryn and Bishkek. It is only possible for foreigners to cross the Torugart Pass with private transport.

The spectacular Karakoram Highway via the mighty Khunjerab Pass leads to Gilgit in Pakistan. A regular bus service plies this route from May to October, but sometimes is closed to tourists.

People gathered at a butcher’s shop and bakery in Khotan.

Getty Images

The Silk Road has defined Xinjiang for millennia, dividing into three main routes near Dunhuang and traversing the province before coming together again in Kashgar and continuing to Central Asia. The very transient nature of Silk Road commerce has forged Xinjiang’s character as a marginal land, a meeting place of peoples and cultures as diverse as Chinese and Arab, Tibetan and Turk, Mongol and Manchu. The religions they brought – Buddhism, Manichaeism, Nestorian Christianity, Judaism and Islam, all left their mark and have contributed to the fascinating cultural and artistic heritage of the province.

Loulan ruins in Lop Nur.

ImagineChina

The former central route

Until the 4th century AD, the main Silk Road route west from Dunhuang led through Yumenguan, across the incredibly inhospitable Gashun Gobi, to the almost legendary city of Loulan on the shores of a lake called Lop Nur, before following the waters of the Konqi River northwest to the oasis town of Korla. By about AD 400, increasing desertification and the wandering nature of Lop Nur – dependent on the Tarim River system and the run-off of glacial waters from the Tian Shan, Pamir, Kunlun and Altun ranges – had combined to make this Central Route impracticable. It became easier to follow either the old, long-established Southern Route via Yangguan and Miran to Khotan, or the Northern Route, via the oases of Hami and Turpan, to Korla. Both routes converged in the west at Kashgar before continuing west to Samarkand, or south to Ladakh and Kashmir.

Ancient Loulan was rediscovered by Sven Hedin in 1899, then excavated more thoroughly by Aurel Stein in 1906 and 1914. It was rediscovered by the Chinese authorities in the 1970s, and desultory excavations have continued in the area since that time. The best of the finds are on display at the Xinjiang Autonomous Region Museum in Urumqi (for more information, click here), and include a manuscript outlining the military strategies of the Warring States period, mummies and a 10-metre (33-ft) -high pagoda. The archaeological site at Loulan Gucheng (open 8am–4pm daily; charge) remains off-limits to ordinary Silk Road travellers. Four-wheel-drive vehicles and camels are necessary to visit, as well as a professional GPS system and – crucially – an expensive permit from the appropriate Chinese authorities.

Lop Nur, the wandering lake

Lop Nur lake was the key to the flourishing caravan city of Loulan and the Central Silk Road between Yumenguan and Korla. When the lake began to dry up around 2,000 years ago, Loulan gradually declined and was eventually abandoned in the 5th century AD. Soon, as Silk Road traffic was redirected via the Northern and Southern routes, Loulan – together with other former caravan cities lost to the advancing sands of the Taklamakan – became little more than a legend, a rumour of lost splendour and wandering ghosts.

The ancient city was rediscovered by the Swedish explorer Sven Hedin in 1899. Hedin was the first to understand and explain how Lop Nur had “wandered”, changing its location apparently at random over the centuries, but in fact due to the changing course of glacial rivers losing themselves in the heart of the Tarim Basin. In the 1920s Lop Nur dried up almost completely, and today there is little more than a small, seasonal salt marsh to indicate the presence of the former lake.

In the 1960s Lop Nur once again emerged from obscurity, when China exploded its first nuclear device, codenamed “596”, in the area. China is now observing a de facto moratorium on nuclear testing, and has begun a project to divert water from Korla’s Kongque River in an attempt to bring Lop Nur back to at least partial life.

One reason such permits are not readily obtained is the damage that has been done to the site over the years by robbers, vandals and others. Another, which should also discourage thought of a casual journey to Loulan, is that apart from its extreme aridity the Lop Desert has been extensively irradiated. China’s first nuclear bomb test took place at Lop Nur in 1964, and...

Table of contents

• The Silk Road’s Top 10 Attractions
• Editor’s Choice
• Introduction: Ancient Trade Route
• The Incredible Journey
• Decisive Dates
• The First Steps
• The Opening of the Road
• The Middlemen
• Glory and Decline
• The Mongol Era and Rise of Europe
• Rediscovering the Road
• Insight: Treasures of the Silk Road
• The Story of Silk
• Insight: Silk Production
• Life on the Road
• Insight: Bazaars
• The Spread of Ideas
• People and the Environment
• Introduction: The Silk Road Experience
• Introduction: China
• Shaanxi
• Gansu
• Xinjiang
• Introduction: Central Asia
• Pakistan
• Afghanistan
• Kyrgyzstan
• Insight: Yurts
• Kazakhstan
• Tajikistan
• Uzbekistan
• Turkmenistan
• Introduction: Western Asia
• Iran
• Iraq
• Syria
• Lebanon
• Turkey
• China: Getting There and Getting Around
• China: A-Z: A Handy Summary of Practical Information
• China: Understanding the Language
• China: Further Reading
• Central Asia: Transport
• Central Asia: A-Z: A Handy Summary of Practical Information
• Central Asia: Understanding the Language
• Central Asia: Further Reading
• Western Asia: Transport
• Western Asia: A-Z: A Handy Summary of Practical Information
• Western Asia: Understanding the Language
• Western Asia: Further Reading