Kashgar, Xīnjiāng Uyghur Autonomous Region

Kashgar, a trading post on the Silk Road for the last two thousand years, whilst being encroached upon by modern China and the influx of Han Chinese remains an exotic city of frenetic trading activity in its ancient bazaars and streets.

Whilst not much of the old town walls remain, within them is a warren of narrow streets and alleys lined with earthen-walled homes with small shops making and selling everything imaginable. Wandering through these alleys there is always something unexpected just around the corner.

The main market in Kashgar is the weekly Sunday Market which involves not only the resident Uyghur, Tajik, Kyrgyz, Uzbek and Han Chinese, but also swells the population with an additional 50,000 people. Traders come from as far as Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Pakistan and even Russia to make money in this one of the world's biggest markets.