Discover Xinjiang
Kashgar Sunday Livestock Market
喀什牛羊大巴扎
A genuine working animal market on the city's north-eastern edge, where several thousand farmers and herders come in to trade sheep, cattle, horses and donkeys, haggle in Uyghur, and eat lamb from open-air pits. It is the least touristic thing in Kashgar and the best reason to time your visit to the right day.
The story
What makes this place special
Kashgar's weekly livestock bazaar, the Mal Bazaar, is the surviving working version of the city's Sunday market tradition, at which farmers and herders from the surrounding oases, deserts and mountains come in to buy and sell animals. It was moved out of the city centre to a site on the outskirts, which accounts for travellers' accounts of being driven out of town to reach it, with the smell of a large animal market in warm weather given as the reason for the move. Sources disagree on the hours, with some giving a late-morning to evening opening and others describing a dawn-to-lunchtime rush in which most of the animals within tens of kilometres pass through the gates by midday.
What you’ll discover
A large fenced yard of packed dust, divided roughly by species: lines of fat-tailed sheep tied head to head, cattle, donkeys, horses being trotted up and down to show their paces, and in season camels. Men in doppa caps negotiate by holding and slapping hands, animals are loaded into three-wheelers and the backs of vans, and around the edges are butchers, nan ovens, kebab stalls, saddle and rope sellers and a crowd eating lunch. It is noisy, dusty and entirely a working market.
A little local insight
Good to know before you go
- Go early. The best of it is in the first hours after the animals arrive, and accounts agree that by lunchtime the trade is winding down, whatever the stated hours.
- Sunday is the day. Reported opening times vary, so confirm the current arrangement locally the day before rather than relying on a published figure, and arrange the car then too.
- It is outside town and there is no sensible way to get there and back without a vehicle. Agree with the driver that he will wait; getting back from the gate is hard.
- This is the single most authentic thing left on a Kashgar itinerary and it is not a performance, so behave accordingly: stay out of the animal lanes, do not get between a buyer and a beast, and ask before photographing faces. Photography of the market itself is generally unremarked; photography of any police presence is not.
- Wear shoes and clothes you do not mind ruining. The ground is dust, dung and mud, and a hot day makes the whole place smell accordingly.
- Eat there. The kebabs and the nan at a livestock market are the best in the region for obvious reasons, and the lamb offal soup at the stalls is what the traders eat.
When to come
Sunday, as early as you can get there. April to June and September to October for weather; midsummer makes the yard brutally hot and dusty, and winter mornings are bitter but the market still runs.
Getting around
Poor. The market is a large yard of rutted, dusty, dung-covered ground with animals moving unpredictably through it, no made paths and no seating, which makes it unsafe and impractical for a wheelchair and difficult on an unsteady leg. There is no shade and no accessible toilet. A bad knee can manage a short visit near the gate and the food stalls.
Worth knowing before you go
The permanent 'Grand Bazaar' building in the city centre is a different, far more touristic place - the livestock market is the one worth getting up for. Wear shoes you do not mind ruining.
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