Hotan

As responsible campers, keeping the campsite clean is an unspoken yet important rule to stand by.  It was further emphasised by Tango in the morning, reminding us that our slogan for camping out should be ‘keeping the campsite cleaner than we came’.

After a short round of collecting rubbish, we rolled out for Hotan at 9am. The drive today would be a short one, with only 250km ahead of us.

Convoy rolling out of campsite

At this point, Nadya and I had been the sole drivers for the journey. Suzhen, who could only drive an automatic, was completely relegated to passenger duty as our car was manual and we didn’t want to die at her hands.

We were glad when Zain went behind the wheel to relieve us for a while. Unfortunately, after less than two hours of driving, he was suffering from leg cramps and sleepiness (the latter caused by lack of interaction as he claimed). Nadya then took over for the remaining journey of the day.                                                                                                                                  

The drive out of the campsite was an interesting one. Besides the usual hustling and bustling of the local people, we soon noticed that almost every house along the road owned what we described as ‘mini grape tunnels’ in their homes. The grapevines would crawl up the wooden racks built in the shape of a tunnel and provide shade (as well as grapes, of course) for those who were walking under the tunnel.

Donkey cart on the main road

The day was extremely hot, a big contrast to our first camping night in Karakora Lake where we nearly froze to oblivion. The front seats especially, was getting full blast of the sun, where driver and co-driver were slowly but surely roasting under the heat.

So, it was an extremely welcome change when we got to drive through the well-known grape tunnel, where the vines provided much needed shade, cooling us down. Initially, when we were told about the visit, we had thought it required us to get out of the car for a short walk among the vines. Not realising how wide the road was in the tunnel, it was just as well that we didn’t need to get out into the heat.

Grape Tunnel

The Drive Thru

By this time, I think the hot weather was beginning to get to Nadya. She was bordering schizophrenic during the drive through the tunnel. The grape tunnel was actually built in the middle of a housing community, where children were running around freely. With the convoy driving through the tunnel in a grandiose manner, many were looking at us wide-eyed. Unfortunately, that didn’t stop them from not paying attention to the road.

Nadya was a little stressed out with the drive, worried that she might hit someone. One moment she would be going: “@#$%^, can you not run past this way? Want to die is it?” A second later, she would be going “Awwww….Look! So cute! He’s showing off his new pen to his friend.”

But I’m glad to report that as long as she got out of the driver’s seat, she was as good as cured from her psychotic bouts.

After the short drive, we were treated to another local visit to a carpet-making factory. All of the carpets were hand woven by women with silk or wool. The process was labourious and it was interesting to watch the workers go on and on with full concentration, focused on what looked like art to us but livelihood to them.

As their hands worked fastidiously, you can’t help but watch them with fascination, wondering what was their life story. Do they need the job to provide for their families? Was having a job here a coming-of-age thing for the local girls? Do they not think about leaving this town for better prospects in the city or was leaving their family behind simply not allowed for these ladies?

Hard at work weaving

Girls at work for a bigger sized carpet

 After saying goodbye to the carpet weaving girls, we had to head to our next home for the night. Passing by a bridge on the way, we looked down to a huge amount of people walking around on the sand below. All of them were carefully searching the ground right next to the streams, scanning for something. We later found out that they were fishing for white jade from the river, an item that Hotan was famous for.

The day unfortunately was getting too dark for us to join them on the riverbed. There was a long and challenging drive ahead of everyone and we had only one thing on our mind, to turn in early so that we would be refreshed enough to take on the long journey.