last day. breakfast at caravan café (www.caravancafe.com). had checked out the menu before and happily ordered a latte (18) and a banana nut cake (10). liked the art pieces decorating the place and asked the price: 500 and 1200. seemed expensive compared to panjiayuan prices. also bought 10 cloth bookmarks (80). also coasters, key chains etc made by women for women, an NGO.
decided to hunt for oil paintings at 东巴扎 to no avail. store owner from whom A purchased lots offered to take us to another place which sold paintings. his brother would man the store in his absence. he paid for the cab fare (it’s a 5rmb radius within kashgar city). deserted shopping centre indeed with oil paintings available but not what we were looking for.
had also contacted abdul (who ran the tour agency) who said that there was a painter at seman and that he was a very good friend. so it was back to seman, which had surprisingly huge grounds and where the 3-star hotel block was tucked away. first impression had been that seman was in very bad shape.
the painter was not there but the wife turned up with a portable IV drip in tow. alas, the prices she quoted were ridiculous: 1500 for a small painting and 5000 for a larger one depicting the old city’s walkways.
made our way back to caravan café, where ron (from canada) got hold of the artist for us. this bearded man with wild hair and a fierce glint in his eye came over and we followed him to his small shop but didn’t find anything else we liked there. eventually bought the 2 pieces i had seen in the café that morning.
lunch was vegetarian pizza, tuna and cheese sandwich and iced blossom tea. tasted better than it looked.
rushed to the airport only to find that the time on our tickets was wrong. the flight was at 17:15, not 15:40. so ctrip did give us the right tickets in the first place!
it’s been a good trip with really only one low point, tianchi. otherwise, we’d met interesting and friendly people and the weather pretty much held, raining at night and on our last day in kashgar (had originally planned to go to the desert today.)
touched down at Beijing after midnight. thronged by touts upon clearing the baggage area. let the hassling and hustling begin.