This is one of the longest domestic hops in China — Kashgar is closer to Kabul than to Beijing — so the choice is genuinely between losing a day and losing an evening.
Flying#
Flights between Urumqi Diwopu (URC) and Kashgar Laining (KHG) take about two hours and run several times daily on a mix of carriers. If your trip has any Karakoram or Tashkurgan leg in it, this is the sensible way to buy back the time.
One planning detail that surprises people: Urumqi's metro Line 1 runs to the airport (国际机场站, with a free automated shuttle to the north terminal area) but does not serve the main railway station. For the train you will need a taxi or a bus, so do not assume the metro solves both ends.
The overnight train#
The southern Xinjiang railway runs from Turpan down through Korla, Kuqa and Aksu to Kashgar. The direct overnight service leaves Urumqi at 20:40 and arrives 08:10 — roughly eleven and a half hours, and the only option that turns the journey into a night's sleep rather than a lost day.
The other services on the route are slower, generally sixteen to twenty hours, with one stopping train that takes considerably longer than that. They are not worse trains; they simply stop more. If you want the scenery — the Tianshan foothills, then the long, flat, extraordinary emptiness at the northern rim of the Taklamakan — a daytime departure gives you it, at the cost of the day.
Sleepers on this line sell out in summer. Book as soon as your dates are fixed rather than on arrival in Urumqi.
What to know before you commit#
Security checks are the real time cost in Xinjiang, not the distance. Stations, hotels and roads all have them, and they are slower for foreign passport holders than for domestic travellers. Build slack into connections at both ends, and carry your passport rather than a copy — you will present it repeatedly.
Kashgar has no metro. Everything in the old town is walkable, and taxis or ride-hailing cover the rest, so arriving late from an overnight train is not a problem in the way it might be in a larger city.
Time is the thing to watch. All of China runs on Beijing time officially, but Kashgar is two hours west of it in solar terms and much of local life quietly runs on Xinjiang time. Confirm which one is meant for anything you book locally — ticketed transport is always Beijing time.
Which to pick#
Fly if Kashgar is one stop in a longer Xinjiang loop, or if you are heading onward to Tashkurgan and the Karakoram, where the road time is the point and you want to arrive rested. Take the overnight if the plateau crossing is something you actively want and you would rather spend the money on the days at the far end.
For the old town, the Sunday livestock market and what the region asks of a visitor, see the Xinjiang and Kashgar travel guide; for booking Chinese trains on a foreign passport, the guide to transport in China.