i'm dreaming of a pastrami sandwich

muktar of turpan is the craftiest devil this side of baghdad. he immediately sized us up for what we were and then took us down. we went with him up the turpan grape valley, which was a pretty cool place, considering it was in the middle of that blazing desert basin. they dig these underground tunnel systems all through the mountains down to the ground water, then run them together down into the valley, where they grow a bunch of grapes.

anyway, muktar drops us off at the top, where we go in and find the suckiest part of the valley. we tell him that we want to walk to the bottom, which was beyond the scope of our original 100 yuan agreement. so tyler strikes this ridiculous deal with him: if we make it to the bottom in an hour and a half, we pay 130 total, if not, we pay 150. well needless to say, muktar was more clever than a barrell full of jackrabbits. as soon as that hour and a half pulled around he tore as up the valley to find us. once he found us, he tapped his watch and said, "i waited an hour and a half at the bottom for you." sullen and beaten, we rode in silence back into town. but we have to hand it to muktar, he's smarter than a bunch of foreign college students.

a lot has happened since i last wrote. we spent two nights in turpan, relaxing at these beer company sponsered fun squares at night. we were in urumqi for a day, then did a 22-hour bus ride across the taklamakan desert (second biggest in the world) to dusty hotan. in hotan we check out the large sunday market, which should pale in comparasion to kashgar's. then we headed over to yarkand, which sucks a lot, before arriving in kashgar today. much has happened, and more than i can/want to write here. highlights include: seeing every single part of a goat being sold on the street in hotan, climbing around the ruins of an ancient city called gaochang, and seeing a bunch of little chinese/uiygur kids doing coregraphed minority dances under a mao statue in people's square.

what lies ahead? first off, tomorrow we head up the karakoram highway, which enters pakistan, to check out the extreme mountain scenary (we stay on the chinese side, of course). then we get back in time to hit the kashgar sunday market, which is the biggest and best in all of asia. afterwards, it's off to the mountains in northern xinjiang. way far ahead includes tibetan monestary towns and possibly chengdu before heading down to yunnan.

thanks for reading.