The Realization of a Dream

I’ll start the blog with way back in 2002 before I had any old cars. I was travelling to the UK for a turf conference in February via Hong Kong on a daytime flight with a window seat. The flight path took us over the Taklimakan Desert. Looking out the window I saw the road around the south of the desert on the slopes of the massive mountain range that runs along that edge and I said to myself that “I would love to travel that road one day”.

Well yesterday was that Day.

On the day of the flight the air was crystal clear and now back to the present; sadly yesterday was a dusty day in the desert and we still haven’t seen the mountain range out to our left as the visibility for the whole day never got much over a kilometre.

Once again at midday we decide to skip a small overnight stop to drive 867k’s and spend three nights in Hotan. Hotan is a larger more vibrant city with some very old culture, but more of that tomorrow after a city tour.

I think most of us left Rouciang in the morning expecting a desert drive for the bulk of the trip. How surprised where we when we came across so much agriculture. The farms varied from small family operations, to what was obviously large scale corporate type farms. All of this farming is being irrigated from the rivers and streams that flow from the mountains. They are still developing large areas of the desert into new faming area with machines flattening and laser levelling into small blocks ready for someone to come and farm.

All the rivers and streams just flow out into the desert and vanish into the sand. This is also feeding the underground water table that some of the farms are pumping from when not near the river or associated irrigation canals. The crops were very diverse with Chinese dates, cotton, walnuts, apples, maize, fruits trees, and melons being the main ones, but the list goes on and on with so many market gardens.

As we got closer to Hotan, we travelled through areas where the main businesses were grass matting then to another town where everyone was carving and polishing lagers stone for features in gardens and parks. I always find it fascinating how in so many cultures around the world you drive into a town and so many people are doing the same thing as the whole street; whether it be carpenters or welders making gates. I wonder who was the first and are all the others copycats?

The day ended with a 15k drive through the markets and traffic to the centre of Hotan.