Kashgar And The Karakoram Highway – 6 Days

Visit the Xinjiang Regional Museum, where galleries introduce the many peoples of the region and its long history on the Silk Road. The best-known exhibits are the ancient mummies found in the Tarim Basin, preserved for thousands of years by the dry desert air.

Continue to the International Grand Bazaar, a busy market complex built in Central Asian style, with domes and tiled arches. Browse stalls of carpets, knives, dried fruit, nuts and spices, and climb the Silk Road Sightseeing Tower for a view across the city.

Your driver takes you to the airport for the flight to Kashgar. Your guide meets you on arrival and takes you to your hotel in Kashgar, for centuries a meeting point of caravan routes from China, Central Asia and India.

Begin at the Id Kah Mosque, the largest mosque in China, its yellow gatehouse looking out over the main square. Then walk along Artisan Street, where coppersmiths hammer pots and kettles, and hat makers, woodturners and instrument makers work in open-fronted shops.

Visit a Uyghur family at home in the old town, where you are welcomed into a courtyard with a carpeted platform for tea, naan and fruit. Your hosts talk about family life and traditions in Kashgar.

Wander through Kashgar Old Town, a warren of earth-coloured lanes and carved wooden doors. Then drive to the Tomb of the Fragrant Concubine, also called the Abakh Khoja Tomb, a 17th-century family mausoleum covered in green and blue glazed tiles, named in legend after Iparhan.

Set out early along the Karakoram Highway, the mountain road that links western China with Pakistan. It follows a red rock gorge up into the Pamir Mountains, with the scenery growing more dramatic at every turn.

Stop at Baisha Lake, the White Sand Lake, where pale dunes slope down to turquoise water. Continue to Karakul Lake, a high-altitude lake whose still water reflects the great snowy dome of Muztagh Ata, the peak often called the father of ice mountains.

Cross high pastures where herders graze yaks and sheep, then descend into the valley of Tashkurgan, a small town at the heart of the region’s Tajik community, close to the borders of Pakistan, Afghanistan and Tajikistan. Your guide takes you to your hotel in Tashkurgan.

Visit the Tashkurgan Stone City, the ruins of a fortress on a mound above the valley, its broken walls of stone and earth guarding a crossing point on the old Silk Road. From the top, look across to the snow peaks and down to the wetlands below.

Walk out on the Golden Grassland, a broad wetland of streams and meadows at the foot of the fortress, where Tajik herders graze their animals. Wooden boardwalks lead across the grass, with the mountains reflected in the water.

Your driver takes you to Tashkurgan airport for the short flight back to Kashgar. Your guide meets you and takes you to your hotel in Kashgar.

If time allows before your flight, explore Kashgar’s markets one final time, from stalls of dried fruit and spices to traders of carpets and hats. On a Sunday, your guide takes you to the livestock bazaar, where farmers from the surrounding villages have bought and sold sheep, cattle and donkeys for generations.

At the agreed time, your guide and driver take you to the airport for your onward flight.