An old bit of travel blogging I forgot to post

As a short Forward I'd like to ask all of you reading this email to pardon me if the writing is a little spastic and long winded. There was a lot that happened during the week and I'm going to try to include as much as I can. Following this email will be an email with JUST pictures (if you don't want to bother looking at them on email, just stalk my pictures and look at the albums my friend Erik Hyman put up on facebook).

(I wikipedia-ed a little bit about XinJiang for your educational pleasure. If you do not wish to read the following short bit, skip ahead until you see the proper title of my travel-log)

Xinjiang is an autonomous region (Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region) of the People's Republic of China. It is a large, sparsely populated area (spanning over 1.6 million sq. km), which takes up about one sixth of the country's territory. Xinjiang borders Tibet to the south, Qinghai and Gansu provinces to the southeast, Mongolia to the east, Russia to the north, and Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Afghanistan, Pakistan and India to the west.

"Xinjiang" or "Ice Jecen" in Manchu, literally means "New Frontier", a name given during the Manchu Qing Dynasty in China.[1] It is home to a number of different ethnic groups, many of them Turkic, the largest of which is the Uyghur people.





Last week I had my mid semester break and chose to go (along with 3 pals from my program), to the lovely province of XinJiang. This was my week...



Mariel Travels Throughout Pretty Much All of XinJiang Province:

Probably the Most Ridiculous Week Ever



10/18 - Saturday – The Arrival

After a late night of talking and hanging out in the dorm, I woke up at 4:30am and collected my bags, lots of toilet paper (the most essential travel buddy in China), snacks and my 3 travel companions (Ben, Lauren and Erik) and headed to the Beijing International Airport.

Our flight from Beijing to Urumqi took roughly 4-5 hours (think a cross continental flight) and provided lots of window scenery that took our breaths away (mountains, deserts, a weird square shaped crop circle looking thing… aliens in CHINA!). When we arrived in Urumqi we found that we had 3 hours before our connecting flight to Kashgar, so we RAN (slash took a cab) to the Urumqi train station to try to buy our end of the week return tickets to Beijing... no dice. So we RAN back to airport to catch connecting flight. Urumqi to Kashgar.

Upon arriving in Kashgar we found there were still some daylight hours, so we sought out an Internet café (where this one Kashgari guy's phone kept ringing to the tune of Usher… but in that really ghetto synthesizer way) and then decided to go for a stroll around our neighborhood and find some dinner.

Dinner brought us to our favorite block in Kashgar. The Night Market. Though only a block or two long, the Night Market boasted fruit stands, food stalls and restaurants, lots of locals, some donkey carts and plenty of amused stares.

Since food is VERY important to me, I'll give you a small breakdown of the main eats of XinJiang.

(XinJiang name – Chinese name – description. Deliciousness level.)

Laghman – lamian – a noodle dish covered in peppers, onions, lamb meat and spices. This is the dish that Napoleon took back to Italy and called Spaghetti. Genius.

Kebab – chuar – lamb meat on a stick, seasoned with cumin, chili powder and a dash of salt. Although quite delicious, and probably the most common food in the entire Province, the XinJiang people have a deep love for fat on the meat that my companions and I, unfortunately did not share.

Pollo/pilau – chao fan – rice, fried in a wok with zucchini and carrots, lamb (of course) and mystery spices. Our favorite.

Naan – nang – essentially a pizza crust (much thicker than Indian naan), some had flavoring, most were embossed with pretty patterns and sprinkled with sesame seeds. Delicious staple. Actually, Naan bread is very common in Kashgar and XinJiang because of the large amounts of Pakistani, Kyrghistani, Tajikistani and general middle eastern/Indian people populating the area.

Bagel… ok, that's not its authentic name, but we found a round bread with an almost hole in the middle that was, as far as we could see, a XinJiang version of the amazing Bagel. Slight problem, they baked their bagels, so instead of the soft deliciousness commonly associated with this type of bread in the United States, the Uighur bagel was hard as rock. Bad for teeth.

Samsa – baozi – there were two versions of this samosa like dish. One was steamed and the other was baked in a tendoori style oven thing. Inside, lamb meat, lamb fat, onions and some spices. Delicious if you could get past the fat…

Finally, XinJiang is quite famous for its fruit and we ate apples, melons, bananas and grapes by the ton. We also found Pomegranates here by the hundreds. This little contraption did the wonderful job of squashing Pomegranates and filtering out the juice so you could buy shots (1RMB) or small bottles (10RMB) of PURE Pomegranate juice. SUCK ON THAT POM! I got totally antioxidant out. (minus the fact that the bottles the Pom juice was sold in were old medicine bottles... safe?)



Our "hotel", like most hotels around China provided both the luxurious and the amazingly cheap. The 4 of us decided to spend the night in the 30RMB a night hostel portion of the hotel, and unknowingly began our weeklong foray into the business of making of new friends.

Our first friends unfortunately were of the smaller nature. Shortly after arriving in our room for the evening we discovered that were not the only occupants of room 319, a room with 6 beds, 4 people and an unknown number of antennae-ed crawly friends. After our initial shock, we decided that there was only one way to show these little roaches who was boss, so we all jumped on our beds, screaming, and proceeded to flick as many of them onto the floor as possible, after which they disappeared for the rest of the night. Thankfully.

The room itself was something that could have been featured in a Japanese horror, or low budget slasher film. Though it may have at some point in the very distant past been a fairly decent hotel, it has unfortunately resigned itself to a creepy-peeling-pink-wallpaper-high-ceiling-lumpy-bed-scary-bathroom type of room. The dial and switches on the bedside tables were connected to nothing (and in fact, we removed the gold switchboard at one point to discover a hallow full of cigarette butts, little friends, and scraps of garbage), and the bathroom was the standard Chinese toilet, sink, showerhead (no stall), with a large serving of creepy. No photos available unfortunately.

Once we got into bed to sleep, however, we were surprisingly comfortable, and comforted by the teacup alarm system we had concocted (consists of a rickety table set in front of the bedroom door with teacups on the edge, so that if someone opens the door the teacups come crashing down and we wake up…hopefully).





10/19 – Sunday – Bizarre Bazaar and Lakeward Travels

Although we were in XinJiang, my travel buddies and I decided early on that we would not be adjusting to the time difference (XinJiang is 2 hours behind Beijing), so that we could wake up early every day and pack as much into the daylight hours as possible.



One of the main reasons we rushed straight to Kashgar from Beijing, despite being the furthest point away from the glorious capital, was because every Sunday in Kashgar there is a massive outdoor Bazaar/Market that we did not want to miss.

We arrived at the Market at about 10am (Beijing time) and stayed until 3pm. At 3 we decided to take a quick peak at the Livestock Market, where a toothless old man offered to buy me for 100RMB or trade me for a sheep. We think he was kidding because he kept on laughing, but we didn't want to risk it, so we walked on.

The regular Bazaar was full of the largest assortment of commodities I've ever seen in one place: hats (I bought myself a furry white rabbit hat), scarves, tea, spices, carpets, bags, clothes, blankets, fabric, traditional instruments, knives (which XinJiang is also famous for), kitchen appliances, pots and pans, TVs (both new and ridiculously old), food, shoes, underwear, candy, decorated gourds, etc etc… We managed to do a fair amount of damage, in terms of items bought and pictures taken.

We also met and exchanged numbers with another new friend we made (this one was real and had no antennas!), Matt, and made plans to meet up with him later on in the week. (more to follow later on).

The Livestock Market had 4 main animals for sale: cows, sheep (which had huge booties), horses and camels… and also apparently young foreign women, if you were willing to bargain enough.



Having found a small tourism agency earlier on in the day we organized a last minute trip to Karakul. Karakul in Kirgiz/Kyrgyz (Kyrgyzstany) literally translates to Black Lake. It took about 4 hours of driving to arrive, by which time it was roughly 9:30pm and nighttime. Nestled in Pamir Plateau and surrounded by Tian Shan (Heaven Mountain), Kunlun Shan, and the Pamir Mountains. The highest peak belongs to Muztagh Ata (approx 7500m – a whole lot of feet), which our travel guide told us is used as a training mountain for people who want to climb Mount Everest. WOAH! The lake itself is about 2 miles above sea level, so the clarity of the night sky was unbelievable. We saw the milky way in its milky wonderfulness, literally thousands of stars and a bunch of constellations that none of us recognized.

Our evening was luxuriously spent in our own mud brick hut… with no heating. Luckily for us, we were the only ones sleeping by the lake, so we used ALL the blankets to create a cocoon style bed, where the four of us were literally crushed beneath the weight of the blankets (they were REALLY heavy) and had to wake up every time we wanted to move or change positions, because (1) we were 2 miles up and everything was an effort and (2) because the blankets were so heavy we were pinned beneath them. It was fabulous.





10/20 – Monday – The Most Beautiful Sunrise – Taklamakan Desert – Mariel Drives a Dune Buggy and LIVES!

We woke up at 8:30 Beijing time and put on every article of warm clothing we could manage to get on with our numb fingers before heading outside in the dark. The photos to come will show, it was the most beautiful sunrise I've ever seen in my entire life. There are no words, really.

As we began to walk around the lake a bit we ran into a Kirghiz lady, who, using a very comprehensible variety of hand gestures, invited us to have breakfast in her hut. Yak milk tea, naan, some hard bagels and an hour of conversation with our mud brick renter later we were satiated and piled into our minivan for the long trip to the Taklamakan desert.



The Taklamakan Desert is one of the largest deserts in the world, and is apparently very dangerous due to the fact that there is no water inside of it (no oasis here!). Its name very appropriately translates to "go in and you'll never come out," which was reassuring as we neared its sandy dunes.

Fortunately we were mostly in a reserve where we rode camels out into the dunes (I somehow managed to pick the biggest camel of the bunch, and was a little thrown off by its sporadic yarbles and spitting) and drove dune buggies. As embarrassing as it may sound, I drove for the longest period of time in my life on that dune buggy… it was a stick shift. I was awesome! Never fear my driving again… really!





10/21 – Tuesday – Sleeper Train

Tuesday was our first and only mid-trip "travel day". We woke up early, strolled around the Kashgar Old Town. Took our last photos and then headed to the train station to catch our 22 hour train from Kashgar to Turpan. The train station, in Kashgar is an elusive building. Though our travel agent and our cab driver both claimed it was 15 minutes to half an hour away, we found that with a little persuading (and a promise of a small tip, usually unheard of in China), our cab driver got us there in less than 10 minutes. (Apparently the usual custom is to drive through the city, which puts all cars at the mercy of traffic lights, donkey carts, jaywalkers and the surprising slow pace of driving that most XinJiangers stick to).



Though the day was lost, we discovered that short distance sleeper trains in China are not half bad. We later discovered, on our trip from Urumqi to Beijing, that longer distance sleeper trains are quite different… in a bad way. Some interesting things about sleeper trains in China…

(1) Beds are bunk style and thus tickets are purchased by levels (the higher up the cheaper..).

(2) Chinese men enjoy drinking lots of beer on long train rides.

(3) Since most Chinese people don't have the luxury of owning ipods, and apparently choose not to read books on long trips, trains will play bad music and radio soaps over loudspeakers, not allowing anyone to sleep, talk at a normal voice level, or read.

(4) Lights out at 10. No choice. No nightlight. Though they do provide a variety of good "falling asleep" tips 20 minutes prior to the train wide blackout.



10/22 – Wednesday – Turpanese Shenanigans

Our train arrived in Turpan at 12pm (Beijing time. We loved the time difference), and a small shuttle delivered us right to the front door of our hostel, where our Kashgar Bazaar friend Matt was waiting for us. Without wanting to waste any of the precious time we had in the city (we were leaving first thing in the morning for TianChi – Heaven Lake), we found ourselves a willing minivan driver and proceeded to see the sights of Turpan.

Located on the edge of the Turfan Basin, the lowest depression in the world, after the Dead Sea, Turpan is the home to 3 famous sights. The Flaming Mountains (of legendary fame), the Emin Minaret and the Jiaohe Ruins.

The Flaming Mountains were our first stop. After a serious of very bad jumping pictures, our small group decided to climb up as much of the mountain as possible. Many inappropriate sexual jokes ensued, especially since the mountain was essentially a mound of red clay with lots of depressions where rivers flowed down from the top. We decided to climb up via one of these depressions (aka "cracks"… and so the jokes took an interesting turn for the worst) and found that we had taken much too long in our climbing attempts and had to quickly head to the Minaret if we wanted to reach the Jiaohe Ruins in time for sunset.

The Minaret and Ruins were beautiful. Built by the local Muslims during the Qing Dynasty (1777), the Emin Minaret is quiet and impressive in its simplistic intricacies. Made of some sort of brown clay and carved into alternately flat and geometric shapes, the Minaret seemed to glow in the late afternoon sun. The Jiaohe Ruins could not have been more different from the solid structure of the Minaret. Known as one of the best-preserved ancient desert cities, Jiaohe's life spanned from roughly 100BC till the 13th century, when it was destroyed by Mongol invaders. We walked through the partially restored and generally preserved city as the sun set in the distance. It was amazing to see how much of the city had kept its shape, made mostly of some sort of sand/mud combination, we could still see the shape of bricks in some areas, while other parts merely looked like convoluted rock formations. As the sun sank beneath the horizon, our stomachs began growling and we headed back to our hostel.



After eating our fill of yummy street food. We decided that we wanted to have a look at the local nightlife. Just so you know how few people in XinJiang go out to bars (the preferred activity is hanging out at a restaurant, house, park, curb drinking beers and maybe playing cards), it took 2 taxi drivers, 2 randoms on the street and my surprising ability to recognize Chinese characters I had never seen before to find the ONLY bar in Turpan.

Much dancing, drinking and bad music later, we headed home, but not before crashing a XinJiang wedding, awkwardly slow dancing around a room (they literally danced counter clockwise, like waltzing, but not waltzing). The bride didn't look like bundle of joy, so we scurried back to our hostel and crashed.



10/23 – Thursday – Yurt of Kings, Feast of Gods, Shooting Stars and our Last Night in XinJiang

It took a large part of our morning to get to Urumqi, bargain for a van ride to and from Tian Chi (Heaven Lake), drive to Heaven Lake, and then decide to hike up to the lake rather than take the under 10 minute bus ride to the top.

The hike itself took about 2 hours, with lots of photo ops and disbelief at Big Brotherness of the supposed picturesque hike. Not only was the entire path paved with railings, there were signs of various types the whole way up, as well as fake tree stumps playing bad Chinese pop music (so much for the sounds of nature), cameras (which were not disguised at all), and numbered birdhouses. We found this all very amusing, but decided that we could not dilly-dally because my fingers were turning purple and we needed to find a place to sleep.



One Kazakhstani man, our new friend Matt and lots of bargaining later, we found ourselves in a massive yurt with a "feast" before us. (Feast = pollo, some scary chicken dish with the whole chicken in it, and mystery vegetables that smelled like feet) (Yurt = tent like abode made of a wooden skeleton and covered in cloths and skins, and in this area plastic to prevent snow from seeping in).

After our meal (and some snacks we'd packed in our backpacks), Lauren and I wrapped ourselves in blankets and joined the fellows outside for some stargazing. Although the view of the stars at Heaven Lake did not compare to that of Karakul, the fact that it was not as morbidly freezing (though there was snow everywhere), made it easier to stay out for longer and we managed to catch sight of the milky way again, millions of constellations and a few shooting stars before heading back to our yurt for conversation and thawing.



10/24 – Friday – Mountain Adventures, Public Baths and 2 Day Train Rides

After spending most of the night talking we decided that for once we would wake up a little late and peeled ourselves from beneath our blankets at 10am. Lauren and Ben decided they wanted to go for a horseback tour of the peaks, while Matt, Erik and I chose to freestyle climb our mountain. The horseback riders took a trail up to a ridge with a fabulous view of the lake in its wintery snowyness, and us hikers ended up getting lost in the trees on our way back down but have lots of pictures of me covered in snow after various unsuccessful attempts at smoothly sliding down the snow covered mountain. We all managed to make our way back to the yurt by 2pm where we packed, listened to Matt sing a rewritten version of some John Mayer song (that I can't remember and it's killing me) that was about his language study program back in the day (he's 26), and headed back to Urumqi.

Our initial plan had been to go straight to the train station and find some dinner around there, but since we all smelled a little funky, either due to horseness or hiking we found ourselves a public bath house instead. Long story short, lots of not good looking naked women, a shower warden that stared, and a fresh and clean feeling crew.



Our train ride back to Beijing took 2 days. We slept a lot, wrote a lot in our journals and read. We also discovered a switch on our train that turned off the terrible music and radio soaps, and found that little victories made long trips worthwhile.