The Bazaars Where Kashgar Still Breathes as a Trading Hub
On Sunday mornings, drive north out of the city on bus 23—a thirty-minute journey that deposits you into the Mal Bazaar, where villagers from the surrounding oases converge to buy and sell livestock. The scale alone makes it worth the trip: the market sprawls across open, fenced ground with enough genuine commerce that tourists fade into the working rhythm of the place. Animals move through pens, voices negotiate in Uyghur, and the bazaar operates exactly as it has for centuries—as a lifeline connecting scattered settlements to the city. This is not performance tourism; it is the sinew of regional trade.
Walking the Rebuilt Old Town and Its Margins
The Old Town's character shifted in 2017 when the Chinese government rebuilt its warren of streets into a wider, more orderly grid. What remains has a reconstructed feel, but a short walk to the Gaotai Ancient Homes—the small hill just north of Donghu Park at the East Gate—reveals buildings that tell a different story. Free entrance grants you access to an elevated viewing pathway where you can move through ruined structures and converted cafes, glimpsing the vernacular architecture that predates the recent transformation. The ruins themselves, spare and crumbling, hold more authenticity than the restored facades below.
Islamic Architecture and Pilgrimage Sites
The Id Kah Mosque anchors the city's spiritual and social life. Built in 1442 and distinctive for its yellow walls and Central Asian proportions, it opens from 08:50 to 22:00 (closed during prayer times) for visitors who dress modestly—legs and shoulders covered, women in hijab. Entry costs ¥20. On Eid, the square in front fills with local Uyghurs dancing, a moment when the mosque becomes the heart of community rather than monument.
Three kilometres from the city centre (bus 20 from Renmin Square or taxi), the Tomb of Apak Hoja rises as an elegant Islamic structure built in 1640. Open 08:00–17:30 (closed Fridays for prayer), it draws pilgrims and functions as a genuine shrine, not merely a museum piece. Entry is ¥30. Within the city's reach lie two other significant tombs: the Tomb of Yusup Khass Hajip, honouring a beloved Uyghur philosopher and poet, and about an hour's drive away in Upal, the Tomb of Mahmud Kashgari, an 11th-century lexicographer whose dictionary of Turkic languages shaped linguistic study across Central Asia. Upal's own bazaar pulses with local life. All three tombs charge ¥30 entry.
Desert and Mountain Journeys from the City
The Karakoram Highway, which terminates at Kashgar, opens routes into landscape that few travellers witness. Day trips organised through agencies in the Old Town take you to Baisha Lake and Karakul Lake, both accessible by private car and driver or tour group. Permits (free) are required from the office north of the airport. As of April 2025, a private SUV with Chinese-speaking driver and entrance tickets to both lakes cost 1,000 RMB. Kashgar Silk Road Expeditions (144 Seman Road) arranges mountain treks alongside these routes. For a day of intense geology, Kashgar Guide's Shipton's Arch Trekking programme (407 Wusitang Boyi Rd) leads trekkers through steep-walled canyons and rocky riverbeds to an arch that rises five hundred metres high and spans one hundred metres—a formation seldom crowded with tourists.
Davakul Lake, 130 kilometres southeast toward the Taklimakan Desert, offers camel trekking for one day or longer. Davakul means "curing lake" in Uyghur, and the site sits at one of Kashgar's nearest entry points to the desert itself. Entry is ¥30.
A Seventh-Century Pagoda and the Desert's Edge
About forty kilometres northeast of the city, the Mor Buddhist Pagoda stands as a tangible link to Kashgar's pre-Islamic centuries. Built during the Tang dynasty in the 7th century and partially destroyed in the 12th, only one pagoda remains, beside a platform where city monks once gathered for worship. The structure occupies three diminishing square layers—the base over forty-eight metres in circumference, the top thirty-two—and reaches more than twelve metres high. The platform's niches, which once housed Buddha figurines, are now barely visible, leaving space for imagination about what the site embodied when pilgrims moved along the Silk Road.
Kashgar rewards slow movement through its layers. Spend a Sunday at the Mal Bazaar, climb the slopes of Gaotai, walk the prayed-in courtyards of its mosques, and venture into the desert or mountains that define the region. The city remains a crossroads, and your time there is best spent following the actual rhythms of trade, worship, and landscape that give it meaning.