General Tips
If you are arriving from the train station, having taken the sleeper from Urumqi, getting a shared taxi into town should be easy and should cost about 10 RMB per person.
We highly recommend the Xinjiang Nuerlan Hotel, which is locally called the Sultan Hotel. Rooms are about 200RMB per night, amenities are very nice, and the location is excellent, near to the main square and the Id Kah Mosque. The front desk has English speaking staff and there is a large basement supermarket a short walk up the road.
Near the Id Kah Mosque (to the left if you are facing it), there is a “Tourist Information”. Helpful, English speaking staff can help organize trips such as a shared taxi to Tashkurgan on the Karakoram Highway.
Taxis are abundant and cheap. Most rides around town will cost between 10-20 RMB on the meter. When returning to the main town after visiting an attraction, we found that “Ren Min Guang Chang 人民广场” (People’s Square) was a convenient drop-off spot, well-known by taxi drivers and near the intersection of two main roads.
There is ample security staff, and almost all buildings have metal detectors and x-ray machines at their entrance. How seriously these precautions are taken depends on the importance of the building. In stores and smaller restaurants the metal detectors are largely ignored.
For quick and easy food, large flat breads (nan) and stuffed buns with meat (samsas) are sold in stalls. In restaurants most menus are bilingual Uyghur/Chinese, and don’t have pictures. You’ll need to learn the Chinese characters for a few foods, and point. One of our favourite meals was 丁丁面 Ding Ding Mian, short noodles with tomato, not least because the characters are easy to identify.
Sunday Livestock Market
The Sunday Livestock Market is a collection of every farm animal you can imagine being bought and sold, along with every foreigner in Kashgar there to take a photo. As the most important animal market in Xinjiang, it is certainly worth a visit. We went in the late morning and there were still animals being being brought in.
A 20 minute taxi ride to the market from the centre of town will cost 20-30RMB. The location seems to have changed a few times, but our taxi driver pretty quickly understood “Mal Bazar”. Entry is free.
The market has are some basic food stalls, serving noodles with meat, samsas and meat BBQ.
Getting back into town is not difficult, after a short wait we flagged down a taxi that was dropping people off.
Id Kah Mosque/Old Town
Much of the Old Town has been rebuilt to a certain uniform aesthetic, but it is still pleasant to walk around. Regular people still live here, and there are many food stalls. Across Jiefang road from the Id Kah Mosque there are food stalls set up in the evening, which is a nice place to grab some dinner.
Walking around the various alleys will not take up more than a day or two. Most places are within walking distance.
The Id Kah Mosque itself is nice to look at from the outside. You can sit in the shade in the town square and watch the people go by. For 20RMB you can go inside, where there are some gardens, but you will not spend more than half an hour here.
Abakh Hoja Tomb/Afaq Khoja Mausoleum
The history of this tomb is somewhat contested, but it’s unarguably a beautiful site. Located about 5KM outside of town, the entry fee is 30RMB. We had some trouble communicating where we wanted to go to our taxi driver, but were able to get there using the tried and true “input location into Baidu maps and enable GPS navigation” method.
Taxis will drop you off in a sort of mall parking lot, and you’ll walk about 400 metres to the actual site entrance. In addition to the tomb, the complex also contains the Friday Mosque, with wooden pillars carved and painted with various designs.
