Your observations sound very reasonable. There’s clearly a rise in Islamic fundamentalism taking place in certain parts of the UAR, but not to the extent that civilized life is becoming impossible. Kashgar is nothing at all like Urumqi. The terrain is harshly beautiful (in the north as well as the south — there are serious mountain ranges in every direction).

It seems to me simple common sense that the level of violence is vastly lower than it would be without Han administrative influence, but that’s debatable (I suppose), as well as an irresolvable counter-factual.

As someone traveling alone who was sometimes taken for Han at first glance (once I started speaking Uyghur, the perception often defaulted to “Kazakh” until I explained further), there was a harder edge to Kashgar than Urumqi … the resentments were fresher, palpably closer to surfacing. That said, I never once felt physically threatened … it was mostly little things like the rebuffing of greetings or questions for directions with confused and suspicious shakes of the head. Demographic trajectory + geographic situation (so much closer to the chest of Ferghana and western Turkestan … hence the more ‘Iranian’ cut of the features, the greater frequency of full-length veils), themselves intertwined, go a long way towards accounting for it.

In all honesty, I got far more out of this corner of Xinjiang than the Han-dominated eastern and northern cities, in no small part thanks to the proximity of still wilder reaches … headed down the KKH to Karakol, where I had the chance to chat with some of the local Kyrgyz in a memorably exquisite setting.

As to your additional recommendations, the trip is highly scripted, so I’m not sure how much flexibility I’ll have to add new venues. It’s mostly historic sites and markets chalked in for the next few days.

My impression is that Kashgar is little else than a bordertown bazaar. Not my area of expertise though.

As an aside, the world’s largest natural rock arch exists about 60 km outside Kashgar (not very visited); also if you can, make a trip to Muztagh Ata mountain in the nearby Parmirs (very well visited, but too vast to make much difference).

I’m hoping to get a chance to research the oil industry out there, but I gather that’s considered a little sensitive, so it might be difficult. With my naive affection for petrochemical plutocracy, I found that quite shocking. Maybe it’s the global Halliburton PR effect. Perhaps I should ask to look at windmills, or something equally ridiculous …