Final Post on our Xinjiang trip...

Just one last post about our trip at the beginning of the month to Urumqi, Kashgar, and other stops in the Xinjiang Province. What we may have slightly understood but didn't fully grasp was how much of the original Silk Road we were traveling.

The stops that we did - Kashgar, Urumqi, Turpan, Dunhuang, Jiayuguan, and even Xi'an (we will count our airline stopover, and we had been there before) were all main stops along the route that Marco Polo had taken all those years ago. From the Marco Polo hamburger we ate in Dunhuang to the livestock market in Kashgar there were constant reminders of how important these cities had been in the past and you found that you were always trying to see the cities as they must have looked over 600 years ago.

And then a final point about Xinjiang is just that it is incredibly far west, sort of like going to Los Angeles from Chicago, but because China only has one time zone everything seems shifted. It's about a 2 hour difference in time, the sun comes up around 08:00 and sets much later at night then you would ever expect. The local Uyghurs all talk on their own local time, which is shifted 2 hours, but hotels, the airport, the government, all of those items run on Beijing time. This can get slightly confusing, and that is the reason I use for waking Tina up too early only to spend time in the hotel lobby waiting for Hasan to come and meet us. Mohemmed told us that they have to always think about it, as when they are talking to any of their friends it will be in local time and then if they are talking to a Chinese or planning trips they have to revert back to the official Beijing time.

That's all, just some interesting facts and tidbits. With this I think we should be done with our Xinjiang posting....

Xinjiang Wrapup....

So, we hope you all enjoyed reading about our short trip over to the crazy Uyghur occupied world of North-Western China and the Xinjiang Province. Overall this is easily our best trip ever within China, and we are trying to figure out where it goes in our overall list of top trips. That's top trips since we've known each other since earlier Tina already had the pyramids of Egypt and I had trips to Saint Denis. It doesn't quite top Easter Island, but it's edging in on Mongolia and Argentina....

So, we would recommend this trip to anyone, as the tour we took just got better and better with every day. Maybe we were lucky with the weather, but it seems like out in this section of China you don't have the smog and pollution issues that plague the east coast.

What we will do is list our guides and suggest that you contact them - we can't say enough about them and how they would quickly adjust tour plans based on what we wanted to see...

Urumqi, Turpan - Mohemmed Ali
Mobile - (+86) 13999920477
Skype - Burket1129
Email - Burkut1129 @yahoo.com, md_burkut @yahoo.com.cn, or burkut1129 @hotmail.com
He told us not to post his photo since it would only act to break the hearts of hundreds of European women - we respect his wishes.

Kashgar - Hasan Osman
Mobile - (+86) 9982846633
Fax - (+86) 9982843322
Email - Kashgartour @yahoo.com or Kashgartour @hotmail.com
Website - www.pamirtour.com

Right now, as of 09.23.2009, the internet is still blocked in the Xinjiang province so we would recommend just calling them to make plans....

When we get to it we will load copies of their business cards up to Flickr, but right now I'm guessing that's a month away.

Get there soon.

Day 7 - Donkey Attack

Ah, our final day in Turpan and it was another full one. We will once again inundate you all with far too many photos, so get ready for it...

First up was a trip to the Astana Graves, this is where they had pulled some of the mummies out that we saw back in Urumqi back on day 2 of our trip. They don't allow photos when you climb down inside of the actual tombs or of the mummies that are still there. It it makes you feel any better we lost a bet and had to buy Mohemmed his lunch when we couldn't tell the man and woman mummies apart. We must have still sleepy because once he pointed out the mummified penis we realized that this should have been an easy one to guess.

On our way there we also stopped by a local families grape drying hut. These raisin makers dot the countryside and it was nice to step into the cool interior and look at the rows of hanging grapes slowly turning into raisins.
I guess it confused me as I only think of raisins as black, but here they dry both the red and the green grapes. We would see stacks of multi-colored raisins when we toured the markets later in the day...

Raisin huts in front of the Flaming Mountains as seen from the Astana Graves.

Once we finished looking at the dead we headed over to Gaochang, another set of ancient city ruins. Different from Jiaohe in that here they built upwards instead of digging down into the ground, but still just amazing in the size of it all. It had a certain Flintstones feel to it, only made with clay instead of slabs of rock.

Some of the paint is still on the wall behind where Buddha statues once sat.

This is quite a complex, and although it is still early it's hot outside. The small donkey cart you see in the photo holds up to eight people comfortably, so most had 10 on them. We walked all the way out to the old temple in the center but bartered with a driver to only pay 10 RMB for him to take us back. That meant the we ended up with a slow donkey, and apparently a donkey with enemies.... When we were almost back another donkey cart with maybe 6 people on it started to pass us, when the donkeys were head to head the overtaking one decided to start a fight and ram us - this is the side of the cart that I was on. I wasn't right for the rest of the day after that, I'm blaming the banged up toes from getting the brunt of the other cart and some poor older lady, the heat, the rush of adrenaline from seeing a cart coming right at you, but after that I felt flush with heat and my stomach was in knots. Donkey fights, they'll get you every time.

Local home - notice the bed on the roof. They sleep there in the summer.

From there we drove up through the Flaming Mountains to the Bezeklik Thousand Buddha Caves. There was a story about the Flaming Mountains being created when the Monkey King broke out of a stove prison or something - I wasn't really listening, and I blame the donkey.
The Thousand Buddha caves had mostly been destroyed or taken away by Germans, Americans, some British and other archeologists - so some of the items were lost when Berlin was bombed in WWII, but the museum in London still has some items to display. Almost anything that remained was destroyed during the Cultural Revolution, but what was still around was impressive. Once can only imagine what it looked like back in the early 1900's when in it's full glory. Again we couldn't take photos so all you get it a picture of the outside.

And then we went to our final sight for the day, the Emin Minaret and Mosque. At this point of the day the sun was on the wrong side of the mosque, so even though we had a picture perfect clear day it was hard to capture that perfect picture of the minaret.
We went inside to the nice and cool central room which also had rooms outside of it that helped the acoustics and could be used for people to relay the messages out during the high holidays. Up until 1989 you could climb up the minaret but it started to crack and they stopped letting guests into it, if you look closely you can see some iron hoops around the lower sections of the minaret helping to hold it together.
I want to say that the story surrounding it was that as people traveled along the silk road they usually stopped here and were always impressed by this minaret and wanted to have copies of it made. The son that had build it in memory of his father wanted to make sure that it was the only one in this style and he had the architect killed so that this one would remain unique.

And that was our day in Turpan, we had a 21:00 overnight train ride to Jiayuguan so after a few hours hanging out in the local markets off to the train station we went. This shocked us when we got there, as it was mobbed with people and an incredibly long line.
Yes, the line goes all the way up the street, and these people all have lots of luggage with them. This was taken from inside the station, Mohemmed pulled the "Laowai tourist" card and walked us straight up to the front of the line, it was nice as we would not have handled this easily on our own. This is a major station for migrant workers coming in to pick cotton, but if they arrive too late then the jobs are gone and they turn around and head home - that is the group we were at the station with.

Mohemmed also had to wait with us as we didn't have actual tickets. In order to secure two beds in the same room (upper bunks this time), they needed to book the tickets from Kashgar. So we had to meet a man at the station who had traveled all day on the train on two tickets and then exchange with him once the train pulled into the station. Made it somewhat fun, but it was sad that we didn't get to enjoy a full cabin to ourselves. The lower bunks had an older couple and their granddaughter, seeing as I was still feeling slightly off - the donkey - once we climbed up into our upper bunks we quickly drifted off to sleep.

Day 6 –Turpan

After our fitful sleep we arrived in Turpan at 1:00pm. Turpan is situated in a basin, so it gets extremely hot in the summer (they call this the furnace of China, but then they say that about Nanjing as well) and extremely cold in the winter. The city itself is 150 below sea level, second only to the Dead Sea.

This area was has approximately 3 million people who are in the armed forces here in China. They call them the “peaceful army” as they live here during the peaceful times, working on the land, getting benefits from the central government, and in times of war or when needed for security, are reactivated. They don’t report to the regional government in Urumqi only the central government in Beijing. Apparently they get benefits such as fertilizer and equipment from Beijing, which leaves the locals with some resentment.

Mohemmed, our guide from Urumqi, met us and explained the day we left there were more protests, and roads were empty of cars, and most restaurants were closed for business.

On our way to the hotel, we stopped to tour the Karez irrigation system that has been in place for thousands of years. Since the area of China is quite arid, the locals had to come up with an idea to get water and plenty of it, so they came up with this underground irrigation system. It’s still in use today, though many of the channels are closed. Originally there were approximately 1700 of these irrigation systems, but today there are just over 600 left. Some of the channels were 70 meters deep, not an easy task by any means. The irrigation started near a mountain range where the channels were the deepest, and the closer the channels were to the fields, the shallower they became.

Irrigation Tunnel

After seeing the systems and how they were built, we checked into the hotel to freshen up and then it was off to Jiaohe, the ancient city. This was cool. This city dated back over 2000 years ago, and was built down on a cliff. Yea, it was built down. It was carved rather than built. At the height of its glory there were approximately 7,000 people, though the history book that I had read suggested there were about 50,000. There were two rivers and two gates. One was used for ordinary people, the other for the army. The left side of the city was for the privileged and the right which of course was bigger was for the common folk. The city is under the protection of UNESCO.

It was quite hot, as there are no trees, but the beauty of having a private tour is that you can spend as much or as little time as you would like at these sites. We opted to stay longer. The temples were still in decent shape, and in some cases you can still see the tiny Buddha’s that decorated the temples. It’s a definite must for anyone going to Xinjiang.
Later our guide, Mohemmed took us to an outdoor market for dinner. The market in this large plaza, and here everyone sets up their tables and stalls. It’s quite the happening place for Turpan. We let Mohemmed pick out the food, and it was very good. We had this interesting chicken plate that was spicy, but also numbed your mouth. It was like visiting the dentist, except you got to eat. After dinner we then wandered around the city before heading back to our hotel.
It was a long day, but each day we were in Xinjiang, we were impressed at what we saw.

* - This was authored by Tina, I just posted it....

Day 5 - Last day in Kashgar

Day five on our trip was our last day in Kashgar, as we were boarding the overnight train to Turfan which is back towards Urumqi. We started with a trip to the Id kah Mosque, which is the largest mosque in all of China, it was built in 1442 and holds 7,000 people. It was a dreary overcast day, so the greens and yellows didn’t stand out as much as you could tell that they must when bathed in sunlight… The mosque is in the center of town and the noise of cars, bikes, and people all fades away once you walk through the front gate and around the corner to the courtyard. It’s immense and very peaceful, there were towers near the front where, prior to loudspeakers, men used to stand and repeat the words of the Imam out to the rest of the crowd. During high holidays the masses that are late have to pray out in the giant square outside of the mosque – they used to use additional men to relay the message out to them.

Id Kah Mosque

After wandering around the mosque we headed over to the Abakh Khoja Tomb. I didn’t follow the story perfectly, but it sounds like it was built to house the rulers of Kashgar who first brought Islam to the people. However they taught a strange version that forbids marriage and working in the fields, something like that, but people didn’t follow it and instead ran the man and his son out of town. Somehow after another war or problem the man came back and had loosened up on some of his ideas and the people took to it then. It sounds likes the Uyghurs have a slightly different religion, and we were told that they didn’t even have the Koran translated into their local language until 1989.

Abakh Khoja Tomb

Once we finished touring the tomb and the nearby mosque and old school we headed back into the old town, this time to visit the touristy section where we had to pay 30 RMB each to get in. But with our entry fee we were provided a guide and had the chance to go into some peoples homes so that we could see their courtyards and how their homes were set up. Overall it was interesting to see both the old town and then the tourist section of the old town.

Neighborhood meeting

By 15:00 we had been dropped off at the train station and were sitting in a small sleeper cabin for 4 people. Our guide, Hussein, told us that the train would probably be empty leaving Kashgar but would fill up at one of the next three stops. We enjoyed watching the scenery change to the desert as we left the city, and after 3 stops we were still alone in our cabin. It was perfect, night fell and we enjoyed the two bottles of wine that we had carted with us from Xiamen and played travel Scrabble…

Day 4 – Karakul Lake

We were up early on our fourth day, as we knew that we had a long drive up into the mountains to get to Karakul lake. That and I misunderstood our guide and had Tina and I waiting in the lobby a full hour before our guide agreed to meet us.

Once we finally got started we were a little worried as it was a cloudy day and it was just starting to rain. Our guide mentioned that it could probably even be snowing once we got up to the lake. That’s why I had purchased the coat the day before at the bazaar, but we were hoping that it wouldn’t be that cold…

On the way out of town we had to pass through a police road block, this time we passed right on through. Driving out you can see fields with all sorts of produce planted separated every so often by gatherings of the old mud brick houses. Some of these had their outer walls partially collapsed and we could see into the large courtyards that were in front of the houses. Not a bad way to live, most of them would have a grape arbor covering the section immediately in front of the house providing shade and luscious grapes.

As we continued on the ground became more and more barren and the color changed from a sandy brown to a dark red that jutted up into mountains of ever increasing size. From the red the hills grew taller and morphed into a dull grey, but with streaks of color, blues and greens that had fallen as broken rocks over the millennia. Recent landslides were visible as we turned hairpin after hairpin and wound our way towards the Pakistan and Tajikistan borders.
About an hour and a half into the trip we come to Chinese border control and have to get out and go show our passports. There was a sign, even translated into English, that said “No Photos”, but they didn’t need to worry about us trying to take any photos….

At this point we are probably a good 6 hour drive from the closest border, Tajikistan, but because there are several mountain passes in the mountains and we are on the only road down from the range this is where they set up their customs agents. While outside waiting for vehicle inspection we noticed that it was indeed cold, and that it looked like the sun was trying to peek through the clouds. Fifteen minutes later we were pulled off to the side of the road gaping in awe, and snapping photos, as the clouds cleared up and swirled around gigantic snow capped mountains…As we continued on we kept stopping every so of other to get some photos, we couldn’t stop commenting about how amazingly majestic the whole scene was. Our guide even mentioned that it’s almost never this clear, and we believe him since he also pulled out his cell phone to snap some photos.
As we pulled up to Karakul lake, we could see that Muztagh Ata, “The father of ice”, was clearly visible. Because we had left so early, and the drop in tourism due to the fears some people have in traveling to Xinjinag, at 12:30 we were the first guests of the day. We wandered around the lake dealing with the strong wind which helped to let you feel the cold, and just snapped photos from every direction trying to capture just how beautiful the lake and surrounding scenery was.
After walking just a short distance you really noticed the 3600m height as suddenly you’d be breathing like you’re running a marathon.
By the time we retreated inside for lunch I was starting to develop a small headache. A nice meal and we were off again, just as several other tourists started to arrive and wander around the lakes edge.

We stopped almost as much on the drive back down to take photos, and as we neared the city we stopped to get some photos of a traditional Uygher cemetery and another local market.
Back to the hotel by 18:00 and once we downloaded all of the photos we snapped we wandered down the street to enjoy one of Kashgar’s few bars before heading to bed on our last night in town…