Urumqi Mingyuan Newtimes Hotel

... into a magical Christmas card scene - as the blurb says:<br><br>"Nestling among Alpine scenery, with melted snow as its source, lies Heavenly lake. Its crystal clear waters are surrounded by green pastures dotted with the yurts of nomadic Kazakhs, and the silvery mountains soar into the blue sky, their slopes full of fragrant pine and juniper"<br><br>I couldn't have put it better myself! <br><br><br>So, let the photos tell the story:

... A route of over 4000 kilometres.<br><br>The Chinese are brilliant at building roads through incredibly difficult terrain - as we saw when we travelled on the Karakorum Highway from China to Pakistan in 2007.<br><br>For this entry I will let the photos tell the story!

... game. The highlight of the my afternoon was kicking LX's butt at the air hockey table. Unfortunately that attracted a bit too much attention from the mostly male video arcade hangerouters (on top of the usual "which minority group is she?" curiousity) so, feeling slight unnerved, for the rest the time we spent in there I took to hiding behind Ma Jun and LX while they played some kind of mortal kombat game that they used to play when they were in ...

... the curiosity was even more noticeable when walking around with LX (Han) and Ma Jun (Hui) than usual. After being very nice, but glancing at me surreptitiously when she thought I wasn't looking, the waitress finally couldn't contain herself and the question "Which race is she?" burst out from her lips. I can see if I come back to Xinjiang I am going to have to have a t-shirt made with this information printed on it in order to stop people from dying of curiosity regarding my heritage.

... trip. LX pretty much bullied the travel agent, Lirong, into going on the tour to take care of me. I am not really sure how he managed to do this, but she gave in. She'd never been to Kanas before and business was lousy (riots and all that) which meant her boss was willing to let her go for free. Besides, LX had pestered her to the point where she was worried if anything happened to me up there, he'd be out for her blood. After scaring the living daylights out of Lirong, we went out for dinner.

... meal so we bought some beer and wine (somehow we could always manage some alcohol...) from a tiny local store and ordered room service. And then went to bed.<br><br>The next day we explored our old haunts of the Erdaqiao Markets and bought some beautiful Uighur scarves and some small gifts. We always find these markets friendly and interesting. And as mentioned earlier in this travelogue, we did not detect a great deal of tension nor any indication of the deadly ...

Ni Hao, mein dritter Besuch in Urumqi, und das erste Mal, dass ich hier uebernachtet habe:-) Nun, das gab mir Zeit das Provinzmuseum zu besuchen, welches recht gut ist (allerdings ein wenig propagandistisch, es beschaeftigt sich mit den Kulturguetern der Moslems, Buddhisten, Uyghuren, Mongolen, Tuerken, Tibetaner, alles chinesisches ...

... it doesn't have a functioning rail line, so we had a two hour coach ride through the desert from the nearest train station. The main reason to visit now is to see the incredible Dunhuang Grottoes, a collection of several hundred caves in a cliff containing thousands of carvings and paintings depicting Buddha. The carvings and paintings were created between 1000 and 1500 years ago. Just a few of the caves are open to the public with displays in the ...

... an end to what were becoming train-spotter like visits to the station, finally leaving ourselves free to make a visit to Tian Chi, a lake just north of Urumqi. The area was spectacular, the lake was blue /green and the mountains were covered in alpine like fir trees and snow. We escaped the chinese tour groups on the walk up and stayed the night (most people are day trippers) in a yurt next to the lake. The yurt itself was pretty good too - it's a big ...

... it for Y40, not bad value if we were feeling more in the mood. We have spotted Richard at a table inside, so share with him, and talk about his options for seeing China, having been forced into a Xian ticket, rather than Beijing, because it was that or nothing for a week. Even so, he has 2 day to kill in Urumqi before he goes. The Poles had no better luck, so have gone to Turpan for a couple of days and will return for the Xian train ...