Hitting the Silk Road in the Wild West
In honor of my tireless labour ;) I accepted an invitation from the brown one and got onto the silkroad nomadfest band wagon. It was my 2nd trip to mainland China and I couldn’t help being apprehensive given that my 1st trip to China had left a thing or two to be desired. Curiosity had the better of me and so off I was to the wild truly wild west. Approx 6 hours to Beijing followed by another 4hours to Urumqi (Wulumqi) to be met by a brown toothy grin on that end of the planet was the beginning of quite the kool week.
To assist with the geography, Urumqi (Wulumqi) is the capital of the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region of Western China and you can check out more detail on this linkor on good old Wikipedia.
Now then, welcome to our very own national geographics moment...
Using Urumqi as the base, we headed up to Kashgar which turned out to be quite the historical treat. The dominant religion on this end of China is Islam; generally, I wouldn’t associate Chinese with Islam but then again, that is why you take opportunities of this sort to enlighten oneself and broaden’s one’s horizons! Now you know you are in the middle of never never when you land at an airport and walk from the plane into the terminal and all around you there is absolutely nothing..and I mean literally nothing...and that is not because its midnight and pitch dark but because there truly is nothing.
Prior transport arrangements had been made and our bus which we wrongly named ‘Tulpar’ slowly made its way to the hotel. The hotel turned out to be a snazzy establishment complete with a couple of stars to its name, a welcome dance for the new guests (that would be us) and the coolest surprise feature…Sadik’s watering hole! Our journey along the silk road was starting on a truly excellent note...
Some of the best scenery is to be found in this part of the world...it isn’t possible to capture all the amazing scenes in details but to give you a clue, how about you try this one for size...
We spot a lone yurt sitting right infront of lake karakul off the Kara Koram highway, we chat up the owner, Kyrgyz in orgin, and the yurt is ours for almost peanuts for the night complete with dinner and breakfast and the cutest watch dog ever Santar! The wind was howling, the temperatures were near negative at night, the moon and the stars were out in all their glory…it was a glorious sight!
Other local delights in my opinion were the trip to the livestock market which I wouldn’t recommend for any 4 legged furry ones. I mean you get in through one get at the end of the tether and 2 things could happen to you…you could be sold off to a bunch of chaps spotting the 'wooliest' hats wearing who negotiate the price while maintaining a hearty handshake all through the discussion and only part hands upon agreement and exchange of yuan. If you are lucky, you could walk out of the place or you could head to the other side of the market where you would promptly be turned into some material for soup!
We 2 legged folks form the consuming lot slurping up that soup like there is no manana, sampling the homemade yoghurt (yummy!) and taking in the sights, sounds and smells of the market place. It’s basically a man’s territory and any females you see there are either;
a)tourists armed with cameras….. ‘Pierre looks, it’s a sheep no?’
b)local women expertly weaving the ropes that are bought by the new owners of the recently acquired furry friends or should I say furry meals
c)local women selling fruit or veges to wash down all the meat that you will eat in Kashgar
Gazillion pictures of sheeps’ dangling balls, tom sawyer doubles, yoghurt bowls, local haircuts that would give hare krishan’s a run for there money and it was off to the other market…the Sunday bazaar. Incase you are having trouble visualizing it, check out ubermale's shutterspeak
At the other end of all this is the Taklimakan desert which is a very very hot hike and a remarkable landscape so more photo ops and it was back to Urumqi.
The next league of the trip was the trip to grape central, Turpan In my opinion this should be pimped as Agro-tourism central. Very impressive work has been done there to convert desert lands into grape producing greenery. The secret is the Karez irrigation system which involves tapping water from the mountains underground and channeling this to the lowlands and voila! fruit production.
In a nutshell, it is really laid back area where one could spend their days sitting under the vines eating berries and drinking mountain cold water straight from the various culverts that stream through the region. We also had the privilege of having amazing local hosts who made sure we lacked nothing. If you didn’t think it’s possible to add on a kilo a meal, then you should rethink it! As I lay on the carpet looking up at the vines, chomping down berries and listening to natures sounds, I couldn’t help thinking about the accuracy of the Psalms from the biblical David.
Back to Urumqi again for the final tour and this time we headed up to the Nan Shan pasture lands for a day with a Kazakh family in their cabin. Now that was another awesome treat…We found ourselves amidst mountain ranges, crisp cool mountain air and alpine scenery that would make you think you have found a fraction of the Apls. But we are in China!! I had to keep reminding myself, or were we? First order of business was ofcourse food, then a horse cart to the base of the mountains to do some hiking. Great hiking in steep terrain, discovering frozen waterfalls, following the course of the river to find our way back....it was all good, so good. After more eating and lots of laughs, it was back to Urumqi for packing and our last night.
We wrapped the adventure up with a mean mean hour of power and ‘hangovered’ our way back to our respective domiciles. At last and end of that big country that I quite enjoyed!
The winning tips;
a)This trip wouldn’t have been anything without the excellent planning of Dev and his 2 URC chics…. If you want to enjoy it out West, try establish local accomplists….maximum value is guaranteed. THANK YOU VERY MUCH URC KIDS!
b)Be ready to eat A LOT and be sure that you will enjoy it all…kebabs, handmade noddles, soooo much fresh fruit, soooo much naan (fresh bread), home made yoghurt (I’m seriously thinking how this can be pipelined to me at the moment…sigh) all them veggies for breakfast, lunch and dinner…..
c)Read up on the area before you go. The history of the place is as fascinating as the scenery if not more. The faces you see in Xinjiang are difficult to place and this is a result of all the people who had traveled through their lands conquering them, mingling with them….
Other funny observations
In most of my travel, I have observed that it’s the blonde folks who get all the stares and the finger pointing and the really curious glances from the local population. In Xinjiang however, I reigned supreme:) I went with the intention of checking out the tourist attraction and turned out to be THE LOCAL attraction. Apparently blonde is so last season, and dark is now in! :)
Japanese tourists and local folks took pictures of/with me, folks jaws dropped in market aisles and stands, I may have caused some mini seizures when I smiled, gave them a royal wave and bid them ‘Yakshimsis’(Uygur for how are you) on the street. Lets not even mentioned the ladies at the restaurant in the market who basically sat at the window display just staring at me for the longest time only for me to catch them in the act…busted! I was those looks that say, Oh goodness, look! it talks (gasp), it dances(double gasps), its using chopsticks (huuuh I can’t watch!), its for real (seriously Mike look its for real man, lets call Joe and ask him to come over here!!) e.t.c e.t.c :):)
I was beginning to think about charging fees but then we thought of a better venture…MTV Xinjiang hosted out of a yurt (think discover homes and living) infront of lake Karaku with the host sitting on a double humped camel with a yak in the background and Santar the dog/dawg howling in the back ground!
If you are reading this, and think I'm making it up or you are one of those visuals people see May holidays out West OR Ubermale's view Or catch Gitti's perspective
Now that’s the stuff the DICOVERY CHANNEL is made of…
Labels: Vacation
