Your true traveller finds boredom rather agreeable than painful.
It is the symbol of his liberty - his excessive freedom.
He accepts his boredom, when it comes, not merely philosophically,
but almost with pleasure.

Aldous Huxley


Sunday, February 15, 2009

Discovering Yakub Beg's "Kingdom of the Six Cities"


The adventurer Yakub Beg ended up founding his own short lived Kingdom of Kashgaria in 1867, liberating the country from the Chinese Qing Empire and reestablishing Islam in the region. Kashgar became the capital of his new Kingdom and Robert Shawn, a British adventurer, visited him in 1968, and I will do the same.



Not that expect to find Yakub Beg still wandering around Kashgar; but I hope to make my own discovery of my own Kashgar and its fantastic history. Halfway between the Tibetan plateau and the heart of Central Asia, Kashgar has historically been a mix of civilizations where Islam and Buddhism met in its own way, almost always under the Chinese governance. What is there left? I hope many treasures... though maybe not what people usually understand by this word.


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