Xin Rong Urumqi

... 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!

... so much beauty... I was not ready to leave. I was glad I hadn't listened to the people who told me to stay away and glad that I had not been scared off. I had gambled and it had paid off. Xinjiang is one of the best places I have been to. But perhaps most of all, I was really bummed to have to say goodbye to LX. Somewhere along the line, he went from being my student to being my friend. A good friend. And goodbyes always suck. Goodbye Xinjiang. Hello Sichuan.

... 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.

LX and I went on a tour to Tianchi (Heavenly Lake). Neither of us is really the kind of person who goes on tours, but given the situation (if only all the road blocks) it seemed like the quickest and most convenient way of going to the places I was keen to see. Actually, we had to catch a minibus to Urumqi first, which was good in a way because it meant I got to see what the city was like. Then we headed for the mountains. I was still feeling dizzy, so when the bus stopped at a Chinese ...

... in the morning people exercising or walking their dogs. Unlike our last visit in the autumn of 2007, this was spring and the city was green and vibrant. <br><br>As usual, our first mission was to buy some local wine. The Hotel is conveniently located opposite the Tian Shan Department Store and we were soon back at our hotel, sipping our first blissful drop of local Loulan red wine. Our stay in Urumqi was a great start for our adventures into Central Asia.<br><br>

... the former city of Jiaohe. As with most historical sites and museums in China, captions are few, terse, and ill-translated, and in a city that is exposed to the elements and has been abandoned for something around 600 years, it's difficult to tell the difference between a home and a room for grain storage, or the remains of a wall from an oddly shaped rock formation. Sure, that basement prison (or was it cold storage? a pool ...

... holiday though, which witnesses the second largest annual migratory event in the world (next to Chinese New Year). What do you expect when 1.3 billion people all get the same two weeks of vacation per year? Once in Urumqi I met up with Charles and Peter. Charles is an old friend from college. We received the same fellowship to China in 2001-2002 and most of my major trips (Tibet, Changbaishan, Yunnan) were done with him. Besides an excessive problem with ...

... Daheyan, the nearest trainstation to Turpan, and in a piece of organisation remarkable for China, were quickly escorted onto a bus (Daheyan is the sort of place where it is obvious that a foreigner is just passing through) which took us to the bus station where we bought tickets for it to then take us to Turpan. After about 1 hr travelling down a road that was actually a river bed, we got to Turpan, to find out that it is indeed the hottest place ...

I love this city. It's like being in ChinaStan. The city is a mix of central asia peoples from neighbooring countries, the local Uigyer people and Han Chinese. The food in the streat is rather good with central asian rice, mutton, sheshkabab, etc. The city has full of muslims, with beards and women with covered faces, people selling Sadam Hussian VCDs on the street and Arabaic (Turkish? Uigyer) writing all ...