Yinhua Hotel Urumqi

... a cold a blustery autumn day. We were glad we had gloves and scarves! There were a few families out walking, and more appeared as the sun came out. <br> <br>There was some confusion about our hotel. The one we were supposed to stay at had been pulled down a year ago! It was half way through a complete re-build.<br><br>But we were 'upgraded' to a 5* hotel, which was fine - nothing special; a typical 'business' hotel - could have been ...

... 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!

... heading into Huashan) by a shoe repair/key cutter guy. A whole 2 RMB and my bag was as good as new. Then it was time for video games. Except for a period of time in Taiwan when I took to playing on the drum machines after work to cool down after a particularly stressful class, I have never been that into video arcades. Having said that, this didn't stop me from playing a shoot and kill zombie thing, then getting blisters from an over-excited bout on the ...

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 ...

... 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.

... her to help me send a message to my Mum telling her I was fine, could not call out and to tell her the hotel number. JV was one of the few people in China who knew for sure where I was, which was why I called her. I didn't want to go getting even more people worried about me being here in Xinjiang. She readily agreed, but unfortunately while I could talk to JV and JV could talk to my mum, Mum and I still couldn't manage to talk to ...

... but I said that Wednesday would be fine. On the ride back to my hotel, my taxi driver informed me that the Olympic torch relay would be in Urumqi tomorrow. What great timing. In the afternoon, I walked to the bazaar to buy some leather gloves. The closest things I could find were made of sheep skin, or goat skin, I'm not sure. In case I didn't believe it, the shopkeeper took out a lighter, held the flame to the inside, and held it up to my ...

... for miles. We stopped in some desert town on the way and I got off to get some soda or something and got some serious attention. This guy on the other bus came over to me and asked me if I spoke Chinese, then immediately asked me to go to dinner with him when we got to Urumqi. That's sort of been the pattern over here. Uighur guys will ask you some random question, then ask you out immediately. I know what it's all about ...

... at 4:30 in the morning and took a taxi to our hotel. We were not able to check in since the people were still in our room so we decided to hit the streets to get some breakfast. We are not sure how, other then my blond hair, but a Chinese girl started to speak Russian to us. Of course I had a hard time with her accent but Guzel was following her just fine. The girl took us to a small café and we ate breakfast for about 50 cents for both of us. Now Guzel is Uygur (she was ...

... became less rugged, with a wide valley of short green grass extending all the way up to the snow line. There were a lot of horses in the valleys, and homesteads in the side valleys. In the main valley we photographed a number of evenly grouped half-yellow, half shiny metal rods, all inclined at the same angle, with about 20 groups spaced up the valley in a straight line. The angle of the rods indicate some kind of solar, or ...