Tourin' Turpan

Day 3: Back at Urumqi from Tianchi Lake, busride to Turpan
Day 4: Turpan

Hello! I've been incredibly busy lately that I barely have enough time to sleep/eat/poop these days. I've been to Shanghai for 2 weekends straight and homework still keeps on piling up. Ah well, if I don't continue posting Silk Road photos up then I'm afraid details are going to start slipping away. Girl's getting old, you know. :p

The Fabulous Four left Tianchi Lake bright and early on Day 3 and arrived back at Urumqi in the afternoon. Honestly, Urumqi isn't very interesting... it's pretty mundane except that: 1) the signs are in Uyghur along with Chinese, 2) half the people there look like hapas, 3) you can see yellow sandy mountains in the distance. Aside from that, it has the same feel, the same hustle, the same meh-ness of a regular Chinese city. Unless you see...

... that maybe it's not so normal for a Chinese city?
:p

Our next destination was Turpan (吐魯番), but we hadn't bought tickets there yet. Fortunately, a billion buses leave Urumqi for Turpan daily so all we had to do is drop by the bus station and buy our tickets on the spot.

Lining up at the Urumqi bus terminal.
A vast majority of the travelers here were Uyghur, which made sense since most of the Han people live in Urumqi and not the smaller cities/towns in Xinjiang. P.S. Uyghur babies are the cutest! They all have these extremely large and spherical heads. More evidence at the end of this post. :)

A typical Xinjiang landscape.
We saw fields of windmills on the 3 hour busride to Turpan... quite impressive, with no East Coast yuppies to petition the uglification of the no-one-cares land.

By the time we got to Turpan, it was already getting really late and we were starving like ravenous baby wolves. We hadn't reserved a room in Turpan and hoped we could play it by ear like the free-spirited backpackers that we were, but the 2004 Let's Go guide that we brought along (ahem, Gene) was indeed outdated. :( Desperate, we tagged along with our cabbie (he looked like a Uyghur George Lopez), who suggested another motel near his "tour company"... to our great surprise it ended up being a decent, clean, economical choice. It was also right across from the night market! Really -- there was 101 ways to rip us off that night, so I was relieved to not be cheated in China for once. But then again, we were still in China? Hm. I like the Uyghurs. :)

Feeding on (the best) lamb (ever!!!) and freshly-made Uyghur wontons.
We sat with several groups of local men at the night market (very few women out at night unless they were serving/making food), who were very gracious and offered to share their dinner with us. Otherwise they didn't really pay us any mind, but we felt a little uncomfortable drinking our beer at the table since Muslims don't consume alcohol.

The next day, we hired a driver to take us around the various tourist spots around Turpan. The area is a very interesting place in that it was once the Uyghur capital and a very important staging post on the Silk Road. The Ugyhurs were Buddhists until around the 8th century when they converted to Islam, so there's a lot of ancient Buddhist relics around this town. Turpan is the lowest spot in China (-154m sea level, 2nd lowest depression after the Dead Sea) and also the hottest spot in China (121.3 Fahrenheit). But because of the extreme heat and lack of humidity, Turpan grapes and raisins are super famous and delicious. :)

First stop -- Jiaohe Ruins (交河故城), an ancient Han dynasty city settled almost 2000 years ago. The reason why this place is called "jiao1 he2" is because this capital used to sit atop an island that was in the middle (交) of two rivers (河), with steep cliffs on all sides of the river that acted as a natural defense. Well guess what happened once the rivers ran dry... :/ Just ask Boyz II Men, or Genghis Khan who pillaged the shit out of this place.

Peering into what used to be the river bottom...

I really enjoyed walking around Jiaohe and imagining what life was like back then. When we think about people from the past, it's easy to believe that they were not as smart/advanced as we are today... but human civilization is a gradual technological and societal evolution with sporadic bursts, and seeing how complex yet transient this city was, standing 2000 years ago with garrisons, monasteries, trade avenues, town halls... it all makes me feel quite small and flimsy in the whole scheme of things.

Freshly baked nan (bread) for 1Y each.
Gastronomically orgasmic as it was, it was all we had for lunch. Not enuff.

After "lunch", we drove over to Huoyan Shan (火焰山), which is the famous mountain range in Journey to the West (西遊記) that monk Xuan Zang, Monkey King & Co. had a really tough time crossing. Supposedly they are named "blazing fire mountains" because they look like they're on fire with their purplish-brown color? Well, all I have to say is that people had a pretty active imagination back then. :)

"I'm on a horse."
"BLAGHAGHAHHHGGGGGFART."
"Camel."
* reference to the Grover Old Spice commercial* :)

Look, I'm on a Journey to the West! Wheeeee~~~! ^_^
It was a really nice view up here, but Dunhuang (our next stop) ends up being even prettier.

All done with our excursions, we sought sustenance at a market back in town where literally every stand served the exact. same. thing. Which was the exact same thing that we ate the night before. At the time I didn't really care since you can't go wrong with more mouth-watering lamb. OH WAIT... you CAN go wrong with too much lamb... as I found out later that night during our overnight train, keeled over and numb with pain at 4am. @_@

But backtrack to the dirty-ass market, aren't these munchkins so adorable?
I've never seen such a young child so adept at using chopsticks. Survival skillz.

Next time we pick up from our overnight train Dunhuang, our first stop in Gansu Province!

Tianchi Lake, Heaven on Earth

Day 1: Urumqi (烏魯木齊)

Day 2: Tianchi Lake (2 hrs away from Urumqi via a direct drive, 5 hrs if you get tricked onto a Chinese tour bus...!)

We (me, Gene, Margaret, and Robert) flew out of Nanjing on Friday afternoon but arrived at Urumqi late as balls, sitting on the tarmac for about an hour and making a less than desirable layover at Taiyuan, Shanxi. The actual plane ride went much smoother than I had anticipated, and although Margaret was thoroughly disgusted by being trapped in a flying tin can with people spitting out lugies at constant 30-second intervals, I had a great conversation with the middle-aged woman sitting next to me... who later disclosed that she was a government official. I should have gotten her number in case shit gets down, haha. So Day 1 of our trip was a bit of a wash, but we were on the the only flight from Nanjing to Urumqi available that day.

Boarding our old skool plane.

Did you really think the Chinese line up for anything? Even with reserved seating? No.

Day 2, we woke up early to catch a bus to Tianchi Lake (天池, actually adding "Lake" to "Tianchi" is totally redundant... 天池池?). Tianchi is a small glacial lake nestled between mountain peaks and fed by melting snow. By October, the weather was getting chilly but it was still accessible so long as it was before the first snowfall (then the roads close down). We planned to stay there overnight at a lakeside Kazakh yurt! :)

The ride there was supposedly going to take 2 hours (115 km), but unfortunately the bus we found turned out to be part of a tour group... so we were dragged along one of those abhorrent classic Chinese tours for around 4-5 hours. When the Chinese go on trips all they give a care about are photo ops and tacky souvenirs (like herbal "medicine" mostly). Oh, but don't get me wrong, I'm not elitist. My own mom once brought me back "silver-infused lotion with crushed pearls" when she came back from a trip to China. Yea so... tell me what happens if I smother this on my face and it oxidizes...? Chinese people are so silly.

Early morning in Urumqi, scratching out heads trying to figure how to get to Tianchi.

In one of our many stops on the tour bus, we saw cows.

And cow poop. :)

When we finally got to Tianchi in the afternoon, all our frustrations with the Chinese tour group completely melted away. Our contact for the overnight Kazakh yurts, a man named Rashit (who is avidly recommended on Lonely Planet and Let's Go travel guides for a very good reason), met us at the parking lot and took us to his campsite on the other side of the lake.

Look at this, no Photoshop at all and still SO PRETTYYYYY~~~~~~!!! @_@

Sigh. Computer wallpaper?

Tianchi, Xinjiang... or perhaps Azshara, Kalimdor? :D

I had this epiphany as we were rounding the lake. Then Gene called me a nerd. :(

Walking half-way around the lake took us a good hour or so. The park was very well maintained, with beautiful newly paved paths that weaved through the rocks and trees. One of Rashit's sons (we ended being passed to Rashit's eldest son to his middle son to his youngest son along the way to the campsite) told us that this path was constructed very recently. I was impressed that China's rapid improvements made it all the way up to this 1980m high lake. And that I felt like I was in a MMORPG. ^_^

Rashit's yurts. Highly highly recommended.

Rashit's family are originally from Tianchi, so you could say that this campsite is truly their home. His wife cooked us a delicious lunch and dinner, and we had salty milk tea that hit the spot after a long hike.

When we stepped inside the yurt, we could not believe how beautiful it was! It was completely lined with brightly patterned cloths and rugs, with thick pillows and blankets on the side. Near the door, which was also painted with intricate designs, was a heater. It came into very good use later on that night... brr! (I got a little sick anyway because it got so cold still.)

We stumbled upon some photoshoots while walking around. I estimate around 15 pairs of brides/grooms were around the lake that day taking wedding photos. By late afternoon, the sun was starting to set and the temperature took a nosedive... poor strapless brides! Seriously though, Tianchi would be a lovely place to take wedding photos and I'm sure these pictures turned out fantastic.

Nighttime in our cozy yurt, chatting by candlelight and huddling around our wood-burning stove.

Gene went out to the treeline to forage for fuel for our stove, and we learned about the difference between tinder, kindle, and sustainment wood. Rangers sure come in handy! :D

The moon illuminating the yurts.

As a city girl, I never really got to see a whole blanket of stars before... Before the moon came out, we could clearly see the Milky Way and the sky was literally glittering above us. I can't believe how much city lights wash all the stars out, because in New York you'd have to go upstate to even see the Big Dipper. We all went to bed fairly early because it got really cold, but I woke up in the middle of the night to use the outhouse. I stumbled outside the yurt prepared with my flashlight, but realized that the moon had come out. It was so bright that I didn't need my flashlight at all... everything so clear, except in greyscale. It was so quiet and serene (almost frighteningly so), so I sat at the picnic table for a minute just taking the whole scene in. But then I started to get scared (ghosts, werewolves, rapists oh my!) and scurried back, but not before taking a photo first. :p

Tianchi was an amazing way to kick off our Silk Road trip. The lake was sparkling and pristine, the tree leaves were turning color, and the snow-capped mountains loomed impressively around us. We got to live with a Kazakh household (kind of) in an original and not touristy way. It was a great lifestyle comparison. Rashit's youngest son told us that he and his family wanted to stay in Tianchi forever, and that they're all very happy together just like this.

I can see why. :)