Before anything else
Read your own government's travel advice for Xinjiang before planning. The current UK, US, Australian and Canadian advisories are summarised on our Xinjiang destination page and are the right starting point. This guide does not repeat or argue with them: it covers the practical mechanics of moving around the region, which are unlike anywhere else in China.
Who this is for
Xinjiang is a sixth of China's land area: the Taklamakan desert, the Tianshan and the Pamirs, the Silk Road oasis towns of Kashgar, Turpan and Hotan, and alpine country near Kanas in the far north. The food is Central Asian - bread, lamb, noodles, melon - and among the most approachable in China for a foreign palate.
It is for the experienced traveller: a second or third China trip, comfortable with long legs, patient with bureaucracy, interested in Central Asia rather than China alone, and after landscape and food more than monuments.
Skip it if this is your first trip to China; the ordinary China trip is easier, cheaper and more rewarding first time. Skip it if you have under ten days, because the distances will eat the trip. Skip it if being stopped, questioned and having your documents inspected repeatedly would upset you - it will happen. Skip high summer in the Turpan basin, one of the hottest places in Asia, and winter in the north, where it is severe.
The six practical realities
1. The distances are enormous. Urumqi to Kashgar is about 1,500 km - anything from around eleven and a half hours on the fastest train to well over a day on the slow ones. Nothing here is "a few hours away".
2. Flying is usually the answer. Internal flights - Urumqi to Kashgar, Hotan, Kuqa, Altay - turn two-day journeys into two-hour ones. Use trains for the legs you want to see from a window and fly the rest. Build a buffer day: weather does cancel regional flights.
3. Local time runs about two hours behind Beijing time. Officially the whole region is on Beijing time, UTC+8. In practice Xinjiang time, UTC+6, is in everyday use, mostly by Uyghur and other non-Han residents, while Han residents, government offices, the railways and the airlines use Beijing time. Both clocks are current, and some offices display them side by side. The rules that work:
- Trains, flights and anything with a printed timetable are Beijing time, always.
- A shop, a restaurant, a guesthouse or a driver telling you a time verbally may well mean Xinjiang time, two hours earlier by the clock on your phone.
- Ask: *Beijing time or Xinjiang time?* Nobody will find the question odd.
- Even on Beijing time, daily life shifts about two hours later to match the sun. Lunch at two, dinner at nine, markets busy at eleven at night in summer. Do not plan an early start on eastern-China assumptions.
4. Passport checks are frequent. Carry your actual passport everywhere. The FCDO is explicit that police run random checks, will not accept a photocopy, and that failing to produce ID can mean a fine or detention. You will be checked at town boundaries, road checkpoints, bus stations, sometimes bazaars and hotels. It goes faster if your documents are in your hand before you reach the desk.
5. Hotels must be licensed to take foreign guests. A 2024 notice from the Ministry of Public Security, Ministry of Commerce and National Immigration Administration told hotels they may not refuse foreign guests merely for lacking foreign-related credentials. In practice local police in many places still expect foreigners in approved accommodation, and refusals still happen, mostly at budget hotels and in smaller towns. So book ahead rather than walking in, and prefer places that visibly handle foreign guests - being turned away late at night is a real problem when the next licensed hotel is hours away.
6. Tashkurgan needs a border permit. The town sits at around 4,000 m on the Karakoram Highway towards the Khunjerab Pass, and foreigners need a border area pass. It is issued in Kashgar, at the Foreign Affairs Office near the airport, and most Kashgar agencies will arrange it, which is the simplest route. It is checked more than once at roadside checkpoints. Reports in 2026 suggest it has become harder to get without an onward Pakistan visa, so treat Tashkurgan as something to confirm on arrival in Kashgar rather than a fixed item. The highway is seasonal and snow closes it.
A ten-day shape
Ten nights is about the minimum for a trip that is not all transit. Internal flights assumed.
- Days one to two: Urumqi. The Xinjiang Regional Museum, which holds the Tarim mummies and is the best orientation to the region's history. Acclimatise, sort permits and onward tickets.
- Days three to four: Turpan. Train or short flight. The Jiaohe ruins, a city carved out of a loess plateau, the karez underground irrigation channels, and grape country. A depression below sea level, and extremely hot.
- Days five to seven: Kashgar. Fly. The Id Kah Mosque, the old town, the Sunday livestock market at Mal Bazaar - the real thing, farmers trading sheep and cattle, not a craft market - and the tombs of Apak Hoja and Mahmud Kashgari.
- Days eight to nine: the Karakoram Highway. Out to Karakul Lake under Muztagh Ata, and on to Tashkurgan if the permit comes through - roughly five hours and 300 km by shared taxi from Kashgar.
- Day ten: back to Kashgar or Urumqi and out.
With longer, add Hotan for jade, silk and carpets, Kuqa for the Kizil Buddhist caves, or Kanas and the Altay, which is a separate trip in itself.
The food
Uyghur food is the easiest Chinese regional cuisine a Western visitor is likely to meet: wheat, lamb, tomato, onion, cumin, little that is unfamiliar in texture, almost nothing fiery.
- Laghman, hand-pulled noodles with a lamb, pepper and tomato topping. The noodles and topping arrive separately, you mix them yourself, and a refill of plain noodles is often included.
- Polo, the Central Asian rice pilaf with lamb, carrot and raisin, cooked in a vast pan and sold out by mid-afternoon. Go at lunchtime; the evening version is reheated.
- Nan, baked on the wall of a tandoor and bought from a stall, not a restaurant. The staple, eaten with everything.
- Kebabs, lamb and lamb liver, cumin-heavy, bought by the stick from a street grill.
- Samsa, baked lamb pastries from the same tandoor ovens.
- Melons. Hami melon in summer is a serious regional product, not a side dish.
Two habits worth adopting: tea is drunk constantly and brought without asking, and eating is late. Be careful with ice from street vendors, and note that pork is largely absent.
What is genuinely overrated
Kashgar old town as "ancient". Much of it was rebuilt from 2017 with wider streets and new facades, and it can feel like a set. Gaotai has older surviving housing, and the back lanes beat the show street.
Staged dance and music shows at hotels and restaurants. Short, loud and pointless.
The Grand Bazaar in Urumqi. A purpose-built tourist structure selling the same souvenirs you can buy better and cheaper in Kashgar or Hotan.
Overland Urumqi to Kashgar on the slow train as a romantic Silk Road experience. It is a very long time in a carriage with nothing to see. Pick one scenic rail leg and fly the rest.
The Flaming Mountains viewpoint. A ticketed car park with a thermometer sculpture. The mountains are visible, free, from the road.