Kashgar, China

The old city of Kashgar is a place where sheep are butchered on the streets, where children in traditional embroidered vests and hats walk hand in hand with children in track suits, where men have homemade knives hanging from their belts, where blacksmiths craft nails for horse shoes by a hot fire, where electricity lines are supported by forked tree branches and where the city buses have wooden seats from a bygone era.
The last stop on the Silk Road in China, Kashgar was, and still is, a place of bustling trade, evident at the famous Sunday Bazaar, which is touted as the best in Asia. Here you can buy everything from livestock to raw goods to herbal medicine, food, clothes, household items and anything else you can think of. Walking around during the buying and selling chaos, you start to feel like someone might just run up and slap a price tag on you and before you know it you will be in the back of an open pick-up with some furry, horned and hooved friends.
The new city surrounds the old like an ugly fence, but from hours spent people watching the Uyghur people in Kashgar, it’s clear that modern tile and brick is no threat to the timelessness of their culture.