Xinjiang

My travelmates, Trenton and Kelli.












Last month, I spent 10 days in Xinjiang. On April 17, I left Nanjing and flew to Urumqi with Kelli to meet Trenton, who had flown out that morning. We spent one night there, then flew to Kashgar. After two days, we hired a driver and spent three days on the highway that runs through the Pamir Mountain Range to connect to Pakistan. Along the way, we spent one night sleeping in a Yurt next to Karakul Lake and another night in a Tashkurgan. We backtracked to Kashgar and after a few hours hopped a sleeper bus to Hotan. We spent two days and one night in Hotan than took an 18 hour bus that crossed the Taklamakan desert, which takes up a huge part of the province. The bus ended up back in Urumqi, where we bought hard sleeper tickets back to Nanjing. The train took 40 hours, traversing most of the country.

As my time is limited, I will mostly represent my journey through the pictures I took.

Urumqi



My mother had informed me the weather was volatile here, but we felt the full extent. When Trenton got here the previous morning it was sunny and 70 degrees. We arrived at night to rain and woke up to snow. Urumqi is a rather unexciting city, we spent most of our time ate the only expat hang out in town, drinking coffee and eating western food. That said, it was a relaxing starting and ending point for our trip. We did have an amazing Xinjiang specialty, Da Pan Ji (chicken, potatoes, peppers) for lunch on Day 2.

Kashgar

A bakery specializing in the Uighur Naan on one of the large streets in the minority dominated old city. Bread would be our main staple on our journey along the highway to Pakistan.











A bowl goat head at the night market across from the mosque. The three of us ate half a head, and it wasn't that bad.




















The livestock market, on the outskirts of town. We mostly saw sheep and cows with a few donkeys and goats too. Most people were chasing sheep around and tying them together by their necks with ropes tied to pickets in the ground.

Pamir Range (Karakul Lake and Tashkurgan)

This mountain is about 7500 meters tall, which isn't that much shorter than Everest. The reflection is in Karakul Lake, and the pictures all look like they are fake because it's so breathtaking. I was at 3800 meters and was feeling the altitude, which forced me to do everything really slowly.









The people renting us our yurt were giving us trouble about the food we were asking for. We ended up starting to walk around the lake and this Kyrg minority family offered to feed us for 10 kuai a head. Only the father, pictured here, knew Mandarin, and only a few words at that. The rice, veggies, and a couple bits of lamb meat were not that great, but it was well worth the experience of seeing how they live in this two room stone house.




The yurt we stayed in next to the lake. There was a wood stove that kept it warm. That went out at about midnight when all we had was about 30 blankets to keep us warm. They were so heavy they pinned us to the floor. Even so, I still woke up freezing.











Tashkurgan, the second to last city from the Pakistani border. The city has 50,000 residents, 30,000 of which are Tajik (remember, this is a really small city for China, Kashgar is 200,000). The generator at our hotel broke that night, so we subsisted on candles. We had some excellent Chinese food in this city, which we sought out because otherwise we had only been eating bread and lamb meat.






The "Ancient Stone City," basically abandoned ruins marked by a sign. I believe it's an old outpost. It's the highest vantage point in town from which I took the above picture. I was able to climb around on it freely. Definitely the highlight of Tashkurgan

Hotan

Hotan was a dusty city on the edge of the Taklamakan desert. The city of 100,000 had a very Chinese feel in most places and may well have been half-Chinese, half-minorities. Known for their jade, we spent most of our time jade shopping.