Kokyar is a small oasis and town in Qira County of the Hotan Prefecture of southwestern Xinjiang

Xinjiang

Xinjiang is an autonomous region of the People's Republic of China. It is the largest Chinese administrative division and spans over 1.6 million km2...

 Province, China. It is at an altitude of 1,419 m (4,658 ft).

Description

Kokyar is a small oasis, only about 50 km south of Karghalik, with cultivation limited to:

". . . a narrow strip of ground less than half a mile across and under five miles in length, enclosed between absolutely barren slopes at the bottom of a narrow valley. The people, reckoned at about two hundred households, depend largely for their sustenance on cattle and sheep kept far away in the mountains. Nor is the configuration of the valley such that a much extended cultivation can be assumed even for an earlier period when a moister climate prevailed."

There are also orchards containing apricot, mulberry and other fruit trees and fields of wheat and oats and stands of willow and poplar trees. The people produce excellent felts which are famous throughout Turkestan

Turkestan

Turkestan, spelled also as Turkistan, literally means "Land of the Turks".The term Turkestan is of Persian origin and has never been in use to denote a single nation. It was first used by Persian geographers to describe the place of Turkish peoples...

 which obviously contribute significantly to the economy. The people speak 'Taghlik' or "hill Turki" (Uyghur

Uyghur language

Uyghur , formerly known as Eastern Turk, is a Turkic language with 8 to 11 million speakers, spoken primarily by the Uyghur people in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region of Western China. Significant communities of Uyghur-speakers are located in Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, and various other...

).

Kokyar was the first oasis reached in the Taklamakan

Taklamakan

The Taklamakan Desert , also known as Taklimakan and Teklimakan, is a desert in Central Asia, in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region of the People's Republic of China...

 basin after travelling the winter route north from the Karakoram Pass

Karakoram Pass

The Karakoram Pass is a mountain pass between India and China in the Karakoram Range. It is the highest pass on the ancient caravan route between Leh in Ladakh and Yarkand in the Tarim Basin...

 via Bazar Dara

Bazar Dara

Bazar Dara was a small mining community at the junction of the Bazar Dara and Yarkand Rivers south of the Kunlun Mountains which border on the Taklamakan Desert, in Xinjiang, China....

 or from northern Hunza Valley

Hunza Valley

The Hunza Valley is a mountainous valley in the Gilgit-Baltistan region of Pakistan. The Hunza valley is situated to the north of the Hunza River, at an elevation of around . The territory of Hunza is about...

 to Yarkand along the frozen Yarkand River

Yarkand River

The Yarkand River is a river in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region of western China. It is one of the headstreams of the Tarim River. It is approximately 970 km in length....

.