Central Asian Hotel Urumqi

Yesterday, we visited the Xinjiang Museum where we saw the amazing and intriguing mummies - some more than 4000 years old - which have been found in the area. I found an article in the Independent from 2006 about it, which you can read if you are interested!

http://www.independe nt.co.uk/news/world/asia/a-meeting-of-c ivilisations-the-mystery-of-chinas-celt ic-mummies-413638.html

We took a stroll through the Red Hill Park ...

After breakfast, we left for Urumqi, the capital of Xinjiang Autonomous Region. It was a most exciting drive; through the Gobi Desert, in very windy, stormy conditions; on a fantastic highway [312] which stretches all the way from Shanghai to the border with Russia in the ...

In July riots broke out between the Chinese Han and the Muslim Uigher ethnic groups resulting in the province in the far north west of China being closed to the outside world. Tensions are still high and the province in under heavy military control. Internet access has been shut down completely and txt messaging and international calls are also blocked. It is impossible to ...

Our visit to Urumqi (pronounced locally as Oolumuchi) was split over two separate days; one afternoon on the way to Kashgar and another before flying to Kyrgyzstan. We had heard that Urumqi was just another modern Chinese city without much character and so had not budgeted much time there, which turned out to be a bit of a shame. Admittedly, there is not a huge amount to do in Urumqi but it was still very interesting to walk around ...

My last day in Xinjiang was spent mooching about Changji with LX and Ma Jun. It was exactly the kind of day of doing nothing much in particular that I needed in order to wind down from too many days of seeing and doing way too much! First we went off for a big lunch at another Hui restaurant. Then as we dawdled towards a video arcade, Ma Jun saved me from having to buy a new back pack by getting the old one repaired (the one where the zipper busted just as I ...

Finally it was time to go back to Changji. We stopped at a couple of shops (including a farm for deer antlers, boo hiss) on the way back, but arrived a lot earlier than I expected. The tour to Kanas was fun, I'm glad I went on it. Not only was the scenery spectacular, but I was forced to speak in Chinese for the whole time and I learnt how to split melon and pumpkin seeds fairly quickly, thanks to the auntie sitting across the aisle from Lirong and I who kept showering us in the damn ...

... was still in good shape, but it would have been nice to know more about how many prisoners (or barrels of beer or pool tables) they could fit into the place at one time. Gary, tour guide and history nerd, was eager to see the mummies at the Xinjiang Uyger Autonomous Region Museum, so we had a quick lunch back in Turpan before dashing off to Urumqi in a mini-bus. If I recall correctly, Urumqi is further from an ocean than ...

... he's not a bad traveler. He was taking a year off from med school to do research on HIV/AIDS in China, and Peter is a friend of his from church. They met me at Urumqi airport (I never left the terminal) with a couple bags of noodles (laghmein) and a couple bags of tomato sauce, having just returned from Tianchi themselves. I scarfed down the noodles as fast as I could before jumping on the plane to Kashgar; they would catch the next flight out about 30 minutes later.