IIIF Color HighRes
National Institute of Informatics - Digital Silk Road Project
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| IIIF Color HighRes |
| History of the Expedition in Asia, 1927-1935 : vol.3 |
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Citation Information
a lorry. He added that one came first to the Ugen-darya and then to the Great Tarim. 16o yol (about 8o km) below Charchi was the village of Sai-kichik, by the lake Bot-köl. »You ought to be able to drive there, and wait to see how things turn out, » the Beg said.
Some of us went for a walk in the bazaar to see some popular life. About half the shops were open, the other half shuttered up. Food of all kinds was being offered for sale — meat, bread, flour, rice, nuts, vegetables and dried fruit, especially raisins and apricots. In the restaurants that opened onto the streets the cooks stood with their ladles stirring the pot or dishing up ash, mantu and kebab in wooden bowls, while fragrant vapours whetted the customers' appetites. Sheeps' carcases hung in the dust of the street, the first flies swarming round them. In some shops boots and shoes were sold; in others caps and embroidered headgear of all kinds. Cigarettes, too, there were — a small packet of ten cost a dollar! Women with the white veil over or under a black head-dress strolled in the bazaar; and in the prostitutes' alley the unveiled, crudely painted beauties stood at their doors enticing their customers with smiles.
We gathered that 18o Chinese had been killed at Bugur at the Chinese New Year, 1933. Only five were left, and these seemed to enjoy the protection of JEMAI,EDDIN HAJI.
When changing money we got only twenty taels for a dollar. The Beg gained on the deal.
In the evening there was dancing and music at JEMALEDDIN BEG'S. Two Turkis danced to a slow, monotonous rhythm with uplifted arms and bent knees, rotating round one another and pirouetting. They also sang to the music of a dutar, or two-stringed lute, and a dak, or tambourine. Dinner consisted of mutton, rice, onions and tea.
On the night of March 9th the minimum temperature kept above the freezing-point. I had given orders for a start to be made at six; but »Edsel » gave trouble and we had to wait again. We lost a whole day and night at Bugur. What this was to mean to us was seen next day.
BACK TO KORLA
Outside Yangi-hissar GEORG and » Edsel» went into a ditch three feet deep, and it took a good three hours to get them out again. It seemed to be written in the stars that we should arrive too late for something important farther east.
Among the people who collected round the waiting cars were some talkative Turkis. Several of them were refugees from Korla, lamenting that their town and oasis, once a fertile garden, had been devastated. Seven months previously, KHOJA NIAZ HAJI had come to Yangi-hissar with 7,000 Turkis, mounted but
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