Kashgar

For example, Xinjiang is a very prominent example in this trend.

I think there is one traveler said he's planning to use the 13-day holiday, and take a road trip from Urumqi, the capital city of that region, all the way to Kashgar, which is on the western border.

How long would that

take? It's basically across that whole region.

Oh, I finish work at 6 p.m. on that day, so I have to get a flight at 9 p.m. on that day if I can get to the airport on time to try to maximize your time away from the office.

But when you have this much time, you don't feel that pressure and you can do things like rent a car.

I remember from Urumqi or nearby cities flying all the way to Kashgar, if by flight, it almost take a few hours.

Or to

meaning that it's like very deep under sea level, very hot.

Kashgar is another name for it, way on the west side of Xinjiang.

And I've been there before.

They were rejuvenating it when I was there.

let's say, infrastructure agreement, but it really signals that countries like Kyrgyzstan and Pakistan are trying to talk to one another about how to get things from one market to another.

The reason I wanted to bring all of these strands together is I just see an American company in Kazakhstan providing locomotives to Kyrgyzstan, not only for, by the way, for the China-Kyrgyzstan-Uzbekistan project, I want to make that clear, but including for that railway project, So it's providing these locomotives in part for a project which is being developed primarily by China with a lot of Chinese money that eventually will plug into this logistical route, which is taking you from Uzbekistan through Kyrgyzstan to the Chinese border, eventually ending up in Kashgar, right out in Western China.

Kashgar is where the experimental trade route, which already Kyrgyzstan and Pakistan have tried out.

There was an experiment done earlier this year of basically loading freight from Kyrgyzstan, passing through Kashgar, going up into the mountains to the border with Pakistan.

Anyway, I'm really overlooking,

I'm

We don't think of Jalalabad in eastern Uzbekistan being somehow connected to a port in Pakistan because the mind boggles about how it is even possible to go from those two points.

But what these conversations we're having, what projects that we're talking about actually illustrate is that looking forward in time, There'll be a day when the idea of taking an object from Jalalabad to Gwadar in southern Pakistan will be like, oh, yeah, yeah, that's a thing.

Then early in 1220, Genghis Khan struck his opening blow, a shrewdly conceived diversion.

Chepe with two tumans, 20,000 men, had passed by the southern route from Kashgar into Fergana and was advancing on Kojent, which covered the southern end of the Syr Darya line.

Thus Chepe directly threatened the Shah's right flank, as well as Samarkand and Bokhara, which lay beyond, the two centers of his power.

It was a dagger pointing at the heart of the enemy.