China Lesson #1: If you don't speak the language at least learn to interpret mime

FINALLY arrived in Tashkurgen after the most thorough customs searches either of us have ever seen. Three times the entire bus had to empty all bags (except for me - they took one look at the box of tampons at the top of my bag and said they were done checking).
At the Chinese border they handed out thermometers and had us all take our temperature for swine flu. This caused much hilarity amongst the Pakistanis... Three of whom had to take theirs a second time because the original reading was too low as they'd been joking about with the thermometers so much.

Crossing the pass was in the company of hundreds of marmotts, but unfortunately we didn't see any Marco Polo sheep.

Tashkurgen is the first town on the Chinese side and although beautifully located, there's not much going on there. We couldn't find a single restaurant in the town with an English menu, so we resorted to pointing at what other people were eating. Trev pointed at some pork ribs and I chose a dish of sliced mushrooms. At this point the girl whose dinner I was pointing at kept miming at my earrings. Somewhat naively, I thought she was saying she liked my earrings. Trev thought she was explaining the food and the mushrooms were named after ears (he claims such a mushroom exists...) When dinner came, it turned out the real meaning of the mime was 'are you sure you want to order sliced pig ears for dinner?' Nice. They actually didn't taste too bad, but the chewy cartilage put us both off after a while.

Now we're in Kashgar, where we're staying for 3 or 4 days to take in China and take a break from buses.

I am enjoying wearing a T shirt rather than a kurta and seeing the female half of the population out and about. Chinese wine is nothing to write home about, however.

Thanks for all the comments... especially TJ saying Skardu(sty) was smart - I knew I was onto a winner with that title!

Gemma