I found the desert!

(Please back date to 1/28/13)

I’m going to start off today with another fun fact to accentuate yesterday’s Mogao Cave experience. I had a great time yesterday at the caves but I had no idea in regards to some of the history that these caves possess. The Mogao caves, as stated yesterday, are a series of man-made rooms dug into the side of a cliff to house monks and relics in isolation. One of these rooms acted as a library for the monastery and housed a very valuable collection of ancient Buddhist manuscripts. One of the manuscripts in this library is one of the original printed copies of the Diamond Sutra. Instead of having one, all encompassing book, like the Bible in the Christian religion, or the Torah or the Koran, Buddhism relies on a series of books called sutras that are collections of conversations the Buddha had with his students, the Bhoddisatvas. The Diamond Sutra is one of the most famous and important sutras in the Buddhist faith. It also just so happens that this copy of the Diamond Sutra is also the oldest printed book in existence, having been printed in 868 AD. I sort of glazed over this interesting tidbit of information during my required guided tour the caves which is what I get to agreeing to a tour in Chinese. I just happened to read that fun fact today....

Today was dedicated to doing one thing: seeing the desert at all costs! I have been traveling for two weeks now in and around the Taklamakan Desert and the only real desert scenery I have been able to see has been out of train windows which is nice but a part of me has been seriously longing to walk into the quiet solitude of a big, open desert. All throughout Xinjiang Province - famous for its desert landscapes - I have been forced, mostly due to the winter season, to remain in the cities that I visited without ever venturing too far outside of town. Most of my time was spent wandering through the bustling Uighur bazaars and old town alleyways. The main reason I came all the way out here to the isolated settlement of Dunhuang is because I heard that, even in wintertime, you can get a real, genuine desert experience. Dunhuang is a tiny village and really only famous because of its proximity to the caves and the nearest city is hundreds and hundreds of miles away in any direction but this town is literally buried in the desert. From the center of the town you can look in almost any direction and see the monstrous sand dunes in the background - sand dunes the size of mountains. And beyond these sand dunes lie nothing more than miles and miles of more desert. This is what I have been waiting for and longing to see since I left Chengdu. So I and my Czech friend and a Chinese girl went to a place just on the edge of town called the Singing Sand Dunes (probably called that to increase tourism). But seeing as it is winter, we were the only tourists. These dunes are made of soft powdery sand and I am not kidding, they are the size of mountains and they slowly shift over years from the winds that blow across the Taklamakan. You pay an entrance fee (they treat this place like a national park) and then you are free to roam about the dunes for as long and as far as you like. So we did. All day long. Not only are the dunes a pristine example of genuine desert, but there is also no pollution hovering above Dun Huang like there is in every other Chinese city so the sky today was crystal clear and a deep blue color which contrasted really nicely with the tan color of the sand. It was an incredible day and I finally satisfied my need to see the desert. Ultimately I did nothing cultural and I met no one new. But I did play in the sand and it was great. We even caught the sunset over the dunes - another rarity in China. So to make up for my lack of text, I added a lot of photos.

Singing Sand dunes outside Dunhuang

Camel caravan in the valley below the dunes

Even with snowfall once per year, the snow remains all season

Some hikers on a dune

My companions - a precarious route

A rest after a long hike

Another sunny day over Dunhuang

Tomorrow is my last day in Dunhuang before I hop a bus (or train, whichever is cheaper) to Jiayuguan about three hours away. I’ll probably spend it relaxing and wandering about the town and catching up on some trip planning. I’m still finalizing some of the details of the Russian part of this adventure...

Grottoes

(Please backdate to 1/27/13)

Dunhuang is awesome. It is a little, laid back, desert oasis town built for travelers - travelers of ancient times and travelers of today. In silk road days, Dunhuang was established to provide travelers with a well deserved break from the monotony of sand dunes as traders made their way to Xian and central China and today the town is filled with backpacker’s hangouts and youth hostels. So here there is wifi and I can do laundry - awesome!

Also a plus, there are other foreigners here! I met up with a German guy and a Czech and an American girl I met at the hostel and together with some Chinese travelers we visited the famous Mogao Caves - a series of Buddhist grottoes carved into the side of a cliff where some mountains meet the sand. Along the cliff wall are carved over 700 rooms (cave dwellings), some large, some small, some used to house monks, some used to house some of the best preserved Buddhist statues in all of China. Apparently, long ago, Buddhist monks used to live in isolation in these cave grottoes to meditate for years and years hoping to realize the teachings of the Buddha. Also here are two of the largest sitting Buddha statues in the world (the largest is in Leshan, two hours south of Chengdu - a trip I took a month ago) and the largest Buddha statue in the world portraying the Buddha in a lying down position, sleeping. The caves themselves are located outside the town in a beautifully isolated and serenely quiet part of the desert and the sky, for maybe the first time I’ve ever experienced in China, was crystal clear, pollution free, and bright blue. It was a great day.

The entrance to the larger sitting Buddha cave

(Unfortunately, and understandabley, photos were strictly forbidden insdide the cave dwellings so I have very little to show for what they actually looked like from the inside but to give you an idea, each room was delicately painted along the entire interior with very intricate paintings of various sitting boddhisatvas and scenes depicting the Buddha amongst students. And most rooms had an actual statue of one of the Buddhist deities in which monks, long ago, could kneel in front of to pray.)

Outside the cave grottoes

Is this China? Blue sky around Mogao

Friends I met at the hostel and visited the caves with

I and the Czech girl, Aknaya, broke away from the group afterwards to explore the market in town, small, but full of some stellar food stalls, bought some dried apricots, and ate some chao mian pian (炒面片), or fried sheet noodles mixed with vegetables. I was hungry, having not eaten since before I hopped the train yesterday afternoon in Turpan.

I think tonight will be a relax, catch on some sleep kind of night. They rent bikes here so I’m planning on renting a bike and taking a ride out to what they call the “Singing Sands”. About 5 km outside of town, these sands are supposed to be the place to get a real taste of the desert. Better get some rest...

T296 and farewell my Uighur friends!

(Please backdate to 1/26/13)

Mural painted above the door of a Uighur home

In the end I found no internet in Turpan and so this post will have to be backdated as well until I get settled in Dunhuang.

I spent much of my first full (and last) day in Turpan by doing some casual sightseeing from places within walking distance of the hotel as recommended by Lonely Planet. I spent the morning walking to the Emin Minaret. It was a three kilometer walk east on the fringe of the town. To get there required a walk down a long, dusty street within a quiet neighborhood of old style Uighur homes. These homes are made of clay and straw mostly and are conjoined with their neighbors’ homes. Each is modeled in just about the same way but just as in Kashgar, each home had a unique door. These doors were different though in that above each one was painted a mural of some active and beautiful scene. Most had Muslim themes: a mosque surrounded by flowers or a palace along a river bank, etc. But many also depicted, in some form or another, the minaret that was located on the outskirts of this neighborhood. Also unique to this area, and just beyond the limits of the neighborhood, were acres and acres of vineyards - grown to disuse due to the winter off-season period - but it is here and just beyond to the east of Turpan that much of Xinjiang’s famous grapes are grown. Apparently the climate is very dry and hot in the summer making it the ideal place to grow grapes. And of course, naturally, Xinjiang produces some very fine wines which it exports all around China - although to be honest I’ve never seen any.
The minaret itself was very impressive. Built by the son of the local king of the Uighurs in the region as tribute to the Emperor of the Qing Dynasty (the Uighurs and the Emperor were having difficulties getting along), the minaret remains in rather pristine condition and when combined with the walk through the quiet neighborhood and vineyards made for a very pleasant morning.

Emin Minaret

Then I went to the local museum. This museum was built only a few years ago and is by the far the most impressive building in Turpan from a modern architectural standpoint. And it was quiet inside so when I walked in I was approached by a young Uighur who spoke English named Murat Mohammed (or Murat Mumat which I was told is short for Mohammed). He walked with me through each exhibit and in excellent English told me everything he knew about each display (which was a lot because he had just graduated from a master’s program on local history). I was excited to have met such an interesting person (he likes American movies and TV - especially “The Fast and the Furious” and “Gossip Girls”) and to have received a free tour by a local and he was excited to get the chance to speak English and show off his knowledge and pride for Turpan. It was win-win.

I took another round about through the local night market, bought some naan, barbecued liver, and roasted mutton-filled buns for dinner, and returned to the dungeon.

Chinese notice painted on a wall of the Uighur neighborhood promoting Han-Uighur cooperation

Detailing above the entrance to a local mosque

The next morning I checked out of the awesome Turpan Hotel, found the local bus that could take me the hour and half back to the train station, waited for a few hours in the waiting hall, and hopped my last non-sleeper train bound for Liu Yuan (and eventually Dun Huang - my actual destination).

First of all, since I bought this ticket a bit last minute, it was a standing only ticket. Another one of those awkward find a place to put yourself so as not to disturb the real passengers kind of ordeal. So, preparing my legs for eight hours of torture, I located a spot just opposite the cabin attendant’s booth in between cars. It was nice because I had a bit of a lean-to with the sliding door (partially closed) that separated the cars and I could look out the window to the scenery beyond from the cabin attendant’s booth. The first cabin attendant to hang out in there was a skinny, elderly train employee who I later learned the other, younger cabin attendants called “Lao Shushu”, an affectionate term meaning old uncle. He was kind of grumpy and seemed to ignore a passenger asking for help over something I couldn’t understand. But the booth was later occupied with a younger attendant named Chen Zhiqi (陈治歧) who was quite interested in me and invited me to sit awhile in his booth (which the other standees didn’t seem to appreciate too much). He told me he was from Lanzhou (a future destination of mine) and told me there is nothing of interest there and that actually, Lanzhou is one of the most polluted, if not the most polluted, city in the world. But he also told me he was a soccer fan so we had something to talk about. We talked for an hour when Lao Shushu returned and promptly kicked me out, scolding his younger coworker.

I resumed my standing and had the opportunity to watch the goings on of the cabin full of comfortable sitters. Usually on these trains they have other attendants who walk up and down the length of the train with carts full of fruit, snacks, drinks, food items mostly. But this time, in addition to the food trolleys, a man came on three separate occasions to sell random items in which he must have been commissioned by an outside company to sell because they had nothing to do with train riding. Mostly though he was an entertainer. He spent at least a half an hour “selling” each product. He was exactly like the men in the old black and white films, the smooth talking salesmen who went on and on about their product in that funny salesman voice, never taking breaks to breathe. Just an endless string of words about why you should buy this thing, whatever it is. “And women love it to! Why? I’ll tell you why...” he said in Chinese about a belt he was selling. He was animated with hand motions and bulging eyes. He repeated the process at different times throughout the train ride for toothbrushes and children’s workbooks. Whenever he spoke, everyone in the car got up from their seat to go up to and watch the man give his spiel. And he sold a lot of useless stuff! I was very impressed.

Finally, around midnight, we pulled into Liu Yuan station. This was my brilliant plan: take the evening train from Turpan to Liu Yuan station (now in Gansu Province - goodbye beautiful Xinjiang!) which was the only train available to take when I bought the ticket. Then hop a “cab” from the station for a two hour drive straight south into the desert and arrive at the hostel in Dun Huang around two in the morning. When we pulled into the station at midnight in Liu Yuan, I was the only one on a train full of thousands of people to get off - literally, the only one. And it was midnight and cold. Liu Yuan is not really a place. It is just a station built for the sole purpose of providing a place for trains to stop in between dramatically distant stations across the desert. The only settled area nearby is Dun Huang, two hours into the desert. I didn’t realize this when I got off but quickly figured it out when I walked out of the station. Luckily, there were a couple of Chinese men waiting outside to corral any semblance of a passenger hoping to make it to Dun Huang in the night. Relieved by my luck, I took a seat in his public shuttle bus. What I didn’t realize was that he wouldn’t leave until he filled the bus with passengers and I was the first one in. And considering this was the middle of the night, the trains pulling through this station were few and the disembarking passengers fewer. After three hours of waiting, we left the station bound for Dun Huang. I was too sleepy to remember much but I do remember we drove across drastic landscapes of sand dunes under direct illumination by a full moon. That was pretty cool. We got to the hostel in Dun Huang around 5 in the morning and I crashed.

I’m typing this now after my first day in Dun Huang - I’ll save today’s experience for another post. This one is too long.

I’m in Gansu Province now, also famous for its Silk Road roots. Overall, I give Xinjiang Province two thumbs up but, for anyone considering their own trip to the province, I would definitely recommend a trip during the year’s warmer months to get a more nostalgic version of the historic Silk Road. The warmer months also bring more travelers and more opportunities to wander into the hinterland to see the real desert and camels and all that.

Onward!

The Dungeon

Quick note: I've been without wifi (and/or VPN) for several days so please back date the last few posts. Thanks!

(Backdate to 1/23/13)

Yesterday I boarded the K9788 in Kashgar bound for Turpan. Turpan is back up in the north of Xinjiang Province, not too far from Urumqi. But unlike Urumqi, which, as a city, breaks out of the Taklamakan Desert to the north and is situated comfortably in some mountains, Turpan breaks south into the desert. Turpan is the second lowest place on earth, second to Death Valley in CA - I think... It is one of the hottest places on the planet in the summer and one of the coldest inhabited places in the winter (i.e. right now). Settlers first came to this section of the desert because it had somewhat fertile ground in comparison to the surrounding infertile sand which makes it a desert oasis. But I'll admit it doesn’t feel much like an oasis at the moment!

The train ride out of Kashgar was painless enough. This time I had a seat. Most of the train passengers this time around however were not Uighur but Chinese (and not Han either - I couldn’t quite place them actually. They were speaking a very thick dialect of Chinese and looked differently from the Han as well.) Suffice it to say, there was not much conversation to be had on this ride. So most of my time was spent staring out the window into the bleak, but beautiful, desert landscape.

24 hours later we were in Turpan. Well, actually we weren’t in Turpan which I quickly figured out. Apparently, Turpan is a small town located about an hour’s drive from the station they misleadingly call Turpan. Turpan the train station is nothing more than a train station and is an important train hub because it is here that westbound trains either break north to Urumqi and up to the Kazakh border, or south toward Kashgar and around the Taklamakan Desert to the Pakistani and Kyrgyz borders. So when I got off the train and instinctively looked for buses into town and found none, I was a bit surprised. But in hindsight, based on the surroundings of the station, I shouldn’t have been too shocked. There were porters of course, and so I hopped a car with three other Chinese people for 20 kuai, and we drove for an hour further into the desert to the little industrial town of Turpan.

At first I was disappointed with this place. What used to be such a historically significant, desert oasis town on the silk road is now, at first glance, little more than a Han Chinese cement block town of industry. And the fact that it is winter and mind numbingly cold made it that much bleaker.

I walked through town to where my hostel was located only to find out that it is not a hostel at all but an expensive hotel. But, seeing as how the location and name matched that of the hostel described in my Lonely Planet guide book, I walked in. The lobby is huge and decorated with an impressive Uighur motif. And it’s dead quiet. I looked around to the check-in counter to the sole occupant of these grounds, and, looking behind her at the price board and seeing only outrageous prices (1250 kuai for a double - why?) , became quite skeptical. I asked her what her cheapest bed was and, as if she suddenly understood my bewildered face, said almost at a whisper that they have dorm rooms for 50 kuai per night which matched the lonely planet’s description. I agreed to it and she led me out of the main building to a side entrance that cuts down below the main steps up to the lobby. It leads to a door marked “staff” and leads to a series of dungeon-like hallways with no lights and several rooms. She gave me mine, a 3 bed dorm room, and then left. The room reminds me of a really crappy American motel room with three beds. Ripping wallpaper, broken TV, dingy bathroom, I prefer the hostel. Seeing as I, as far as I can tell, am the only guest staying in this massive hotel tonight and even further that I have been assigned to the dungeon, I expect I will have the room to myself.

The Turpan Hotel

The dungeon

Women buying scarves at the local bazaar

Food stall at the Turpan bazaar

Already weary from the last day and a half, I decided the best thing to do was to walk around and get acclimated to the neighborhood. This made me a bit sadder even because it is clear the Chinese have transformed this city away from its historical roots in the name of industry because the city itself has little character or interest for travelers. I guess I should have known this because all the sites that are of interest to travelers lie outside the city in the desert. That makes sense in the summer when there are tourists and buses to shuttle them out into the desert. But I’m quickly learning that in the off season, no such shuttles exist. So, I’m kind of hosed for any desert ventures. There are some sites that I can take public buses to however and I will plan to make a day of that tomorrow.
I did find one diamond in the rough today though. I found the local bazaar (which, despite the conversion of a lot of Xinjiang’s old silk road trading citites into industrial towns, every place I have been to so far still maintains a local bazaar which is one pleasant remainder of their past) and wandered around for a while taking photos. This is the best bazaar I have been to yet. It is clear that this bazaar is for locals and has not been “dressed up” in any way for visitors. It’s gritty, dirty, and crammed full of Uighurs and it feels unbelievably more genuine. Like this is perhaps what it used to be like hundreds of years ago. The wares are more local, the food was way better, and the market people wanted to interact with me more. It was great. They all thought it was interesting that I wanted to take pictures and they all asked me where I was from, etc. I spoke the few Uighur words I knew and everybody loved it. The bazaar made up for the rest of the day.
Anyway, I went up to the lady again in my hotel recently to ask if there was wifi in the dungeon, and, if anybody out there watches Family Guy, she responded to my yes or no questions just like the Hispanic house keeper that appears from time to time in the show: “Nooooo, ehh nooooo, noooooo........” But I know there’s wifi - my computer’s finding it! Maybe I will have to bribe her for the password.

Best of Kashgar

I'm going to try and make this a thing. Just sort of do a recap, a "best of", for each major place I visit through photos. So instead of writing much, yesterday was all planning anyway (and I basically finished my Chengdu film - to hit Vimeo shortly...), I'll just post some of the better, more captivating photos taken in Kashgar. If it works, I'll do this for other places as well.

First, though, I woke up leisurely yesterday morning knowing that yesterday was a planning day, made some coffee and read through the CNN headlines on my computer. I cam across this interesting piece on China:

 http://www.cnn.com/2013/01/21/travel/gallery/china-new-year-stats/index.html?hpt=ias_t2

It basically is a photo slideshow of the insane figures for the numbers of travelers and how they travel in China during the winter holiday period (which is now). Basically describing how impossible it is to book any kind of ticket for anything around this time. Well, this obviously freaked me out a bit. Here's my predicament. I leave Beijing on the train that takes me to Ulaanbaatar in Mongolia and eventually on to the trans-Siberian in Russia on Feb 9th. And there is only one train per week. If I miss that train, it voids my Russian visa because a stipulation for that visa was that I plan, to the day, where I go, how long I stay in each city, etc., and that I buy my train tickets across Siberia ahead of time. And I won't have enough time to apply for another Russian visa if it voids because my Chinese visa is set to expire as well the following week (and you need at least 3 weeks of normal processing time for a Russian visa). Right, so, basically this article sent me in massive prep mode and I wound up buying every ticket from here to Beijing, which is good because now I know I have a way to get to Beijing to make that train, but is also bad because now I am not free to wander about, place to place, as I originally intended. No matter. Here's my new route according to the tickets I bought:

Kasghar (leaving in 30 minutes)
Turpan (Xinjiang)
Dunhuang (Gansu)
Lanzhou (Gansu)
Beijing

I'll have one or two days in each spot with a day or so of travel in between. I'll describe in detail in later posts why I chose these places. Sorry, I'm rushing a bit - gotta make that train!

Here is the best of Kashgar, in photos!

My arrival to Kashgar

The largest statue of Mao Zedong in China

Camels at auction

All Uighur men wear a hat similar to this

My lunch, called yappon, basically rice pilaf with mutton

Local mosque in a back alley of the old town

Silks for sale at the bazaar

Xinjiang is well known for its unique type of naan bread

Building facade in the old town

Watermelon for sale in the night market

All manner of spices are sold in the old town

The Uighur version of "chai" or "raze"

 See you in Turpan!

Marco....

Iron works district of the old town in Kashgar

I'm going to tell a story. A long time ago there was a devil living in the Bin River in Kashgar. And there was a village nearby that was constantly harassed by this devil. One day, the devil threatened to flood the river and destroy the village and so the villagers sacrificed a young girl to appease it. One year later, Sulaiman, a young villager, stood out bravely to rebel against the devil. After seeking the advice from a local elder, Sulaiman trudged over mountains and across rivers to obtain some sacred iron ore from the snowy peaks of the Kunlun Mountains so that he could use it to forge a huge iron wok. Sulaiman tricked this devil into getting into the wok and the devil was so exhausted from trying to escape that he died. This wok was so big that it eventually formed the terrace of the village as the village became more prosperous without interference from the devil (I'm pretty sure this is how Burlington was formed too). Since then the village became well known throughout the region for its iron works, even to this day.

I saw this story on a sign in some back alley of the iron works district of the old town when I was walking through today. It looks as if it was made at one point to aid in tourism but the location appears to have left it in neglect. Anyway, the iron works district was very cool. Shopkeepers and blacksmiths still work with primitive tools as they chisel away at different metals to make wood burners and knives and tools. They display their handiwork outside the shops and work in the open for potential buyers to watch.

I spent the day today solely taking pictures and film clips. I went first to the old bazaar which, as advertised, was the real deal. Just as Kashgar used to be a main trading hub on the silk road, merging wares from China, Pakistan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and India, so too does it feel today. Pretty much everything is sold in this market. And a lot of the goods were clearly products of different nearby regions. I and a friend from the hostel, Chen, walked around the market this morning taking photos of carpets, silks, boots, hats, and spices. But - massive disappointment - no sheep skin boots. I'll manage.

Persian rugs for sale at the Kashgar bazaar

Then I wandered around the old town for the rest of the day making particular note to poke into the quiet, neighborhoodly, alleyways to get some good photos. Most of the buildings were constructed with this pink, clay/mud substance and the alleys are almost monotonously this color. The exception were the doors. Each door was painted with its own unique and vibrant color. Sky blue, turquoise, cranberry, etc. and although the rest of the building's facade was bland, the craftwork of the door was particularly impressive. Also, since the walls of the alleys were bland, clay surfaces, they were graffitied everywhere with chalk drawings. They look as if kids just took chalk and drew pictures of people and dogs and flowers. The weird thing is that the pictures were just a little too detailed to have been drawn by young children and were often followed by words written in Arabic script (Uighur).

Chalk graffiti in an alleyway

Tomorrow I am back in planning mode. I've got one more day in Kashgar before I head on. I think Turpan next. I'm off to the train station tomorrow to check out my options...

Camels, doctors, and such things

The biggest Mao Zedong ever

Before I get to camels and doctors and whatnot I wanted to share another fun fact. Kashgar, of all places, is home to the world's largest statue of Mao Zedong. Located across from the entrance of Renmin Gongyuan, 人民公园, aka the People's Park, in central Kashgar, Mao looms over the old town with one hand, cupped, high in the air as if to say, "Yes, even you, Uighur people of Kashgar, are my children." I took a stroll to the park yesterday afternoon and snapped a few photos of old Mao, the only Chinese man in Kashgar (more or less).

Camels at auction

Ok, now to camels and doctors. As stated in yesterday's post, I took a trip today out to the Sunday livestock auction just outside the city. I went with a girl I met at the hostel named Hong Yin, a girl from Chengdu actually, and we split the taxi fare out to the auction yard. As promised, the auction yard was jammed full of Central Asian livestock and Uighurs eager to buy and sell. The auction yard was a penned-in dirt field. Along the pen walls were different places to eat, pulled noodle stations, steamed buns, naan roasters, etc. Within the pen were different partitions set up for each different type of animal sold. There were sections set aside for sheep, cows, goats, donkeys, horses, and my favorite, massive camels. We met a foreigner, actually, as we wandered around the grounds taking photos. He was an American named Jeremy from New York and he came with a Uighur friend to buy four baby cows. Interesting guy. His friend, whose name I don't recall, was also a blacksmith from a nearby village and makes fine knives with bone and horn handles from sheep. Pretty cool stuff. Anyway, we said goodbye to them and continued to snap photos. All was well and good and we stayed for a couple of hours when my taxi-mate, Hong Yin, wandered into a cow pen and snapped a few photos of these really enormous cows tied to a post when one of them turned around and stepped on her foot. Her boots did little to stop the full weight of that cow which come crashing down and crushing her last few toes. She took the pain well, but in the end we decided it was better if she went to a hospital to get it checked out - she couldn't walk. And since we were in the middle of the desert, we had to climb on to a mini tractor-rickshaw thing which took us through the dusty terrain back to town. We went to the "People's Hospital" of Kashgar and jumped through some language barrier hoops to get her an x-ray and medicine and everything. It worked out and it turned out not to be broken. She's just bed ridden for a few days which, for a traveler, is a nightmare, but better that than broken. All in all it was a good day for me. The auction was awesome and a few hours in the hospital helping out a fellow traveler is no big deal and all part of the experience.

Hong Yin's arch nemesis

Tonight I guess a lot of the people here at the hostel, some workers and some travelers, are cooking dinner to which I've been invited. I'm happy for the community meal and it should be pretty good, some Chinese, some Uighur, and some French cuisine. There is a French couple staying here too and their plan is to go overland from here, through Kyrgyzstan, to Iran, and then back to France through Europe, having started from Australia. They've got some pretty cool stories.

Tomorrow I plan to hit the big "silk road" bazaar that has been here for centuries. Maybe I'll by some sheepskin lined boots. I really want sheepskin lined boots...

I guess too I plan to stay here in Kashgar a few days and take it easy. I really like the hostel here and the one guy working in this place is probably the friendliest guy I've ever met. That and the internet connection here is solid and the food is cheap. A good pace to bunker down for a few days...

The American

I've missed a few days in posting so this one will be a little longer. It has been quite a hectic and very tiring few days. For one, when I was getting back to the hostel I could barely keep my eyes open long enough to turn on the computer and the last couple of days have been in transit. I'll describe the transit part later...

First though I decided to wrap up my Urumqi experience a bit early. To be honest there is not much of interest in the city that you can't experience better and more genuinely elsewhere around Xinjiang. The only real draw to the city was its diversity but even that gets better outside the big city. So, I saw the major lonely planet attractions (the international bazaar at Erdaoqiao was pretty cool), and then I left.

I decided to take the train next to the southwest to a place called Kashgar. Kashgar is singularly well known for its importance in the silk road trade and much of the city looks as it did hundreds of years ago. Kashgar is the last settled area in China going west before you've reached the border and so Kashgar becomes a launching point for travelers planning on going to either Kyrgyzstan or Pakistan. In fact, Kashgar is closer, both geographically as well as culturally, to Iran than it is to Beijing.

You should also know however that right now is the official winter holiday period for all Chinese people (certainly all students and most work places). So every ticket of every mode of transport is booked everywhere. So when I showed up to the train station in Urumqi and said I wanted a hard sleeper ticket for the next day to Kashgar, the woman behind the counter looked at me as if to say, "Seriosuly? C'mon, silly foreigner. You know better than that". So, realizing my error and poor planning, I checked for any tickets, seat or whatever, and she said I could buy a standing ticket. For a 25 hour train ride. So I bought that one.

The next morning I went to train station and waited for the train in the waiting hall and watched as hoards of Uighur college students filtered into the hall around me. Apparently they were all just on break and were headed back home. As I was sitting, one of the students near me asked if I spoke English and then we were talking awhile. He told me that most of the students here could not speak English, just Uighur and Chinese. But his major was Business English and he was the sole Uighur in a class full of Chinese students with this major. And his English was very good. His name was Maimaiti.

So, when the train arrived I dutifully took my spot in the middle of the aisle of the 3rd class cars along with some other very unhappy looking standees. And then the train started and I just continued to stand there accepting my fate for the next 25 hours. Then Maimaiti showed up from his car a few up from mine. He was wondering if I had any luck finding a place to sit and seeing I had not told me to follow him. Apparently he knew just about half the people on the train so he was able somehow to hook me up with a seat. That was a relief.

The train was unlike any other I had taken in China. Well, the train was the same, but every single passenger was Uighur. And almost all of them were college age students. So I was sitting in a group of five, 23 year old girls, one of them whom of which spoke English and she did a lot of translating for me. Her name was Songsa (which she told me means flower in Uighur) and she was an English major and was also just starting to learn Russian which also goes a long way in Xinjiang. They were all interested in the fact that I was traveling and after learning that none of them had ever left Xinjiang and most never will I was almost embarrassed to tell them all the places I had been after they asked. But they were a really fun group. They made me sing them a song in English (which was really hard for me by the way) and translate a joke for them into Chinese. They reciprocated with some Uighur songs. Their songs were far more impressive. It is a strange thing to say, but the Uighur people behaved in a manner much more relatable to westerners than the average Chinese college age student (I mean that not in a demeaning way, only to mention that it was a remarkable thing to notice). Often I find myself talking with a Chinese student and I just have no idea what they are thinking, through body movement or speech or however. But I knew what the Uighurs were thinking both through body movement and behavior even though I couldn't understand their language. Anyway, off point. The train car itself was a very lively place. The central Asian culture is very strong with the Uighur people and the whole ride was filled with music and song. A few of the students brought these instruments that looked like a mix between a guitar and sitar and they played and sang while others sang along with them. It was awesome. Everyone seemed to know these traditional songs. With the company and the festivities it was probably the best train experience I have had yet.

Uighur musicians on my train

So, I arrived this morning in Kashgar and since I got almost no sleep on the train ride last night, I crashed for a few hours at the hostel and spent the day meandering about the old town, the section of the city that still looks like the Marco Polo days. There are camels and donkeys roaming about the alley ways and the town genuinely has a market/bazaar feel. All day people are hawking goods in the streets. I feel like I'm a character in Aladdin except replace Arabs with Central Asians. Apart from the characters on the signs, you wouldn't know you were anywhere near China.

Today I just walked around but tomorrow I plan to head to the weekly livestock auction with a few people I met at the hostel. Apparently every Sunday, farmers and herders from afield come together in Kashgar to sell their sheep, donkeys, camels, horses, etc. at auction and it is supposed to a pretty unique experience. So to auction I will go! 

Sorry, last thing. The post is titled "The American" because I guess in every language on the planet the word for America is America (except Chinese, meiguo, 美国) and so I knew whenever Uighurs were talking about me on the train, which was a lot of the time, because I kept hearing, America, America, America mixed into their conversation. That and the side glances were a give away. They taught me how to say "I am American" in Uighur: "Men America-lik". Nice...

New Frontier!

(back date to 1/16/13) 

Sign with Chinese and Uighur (Arabic script)

Even Urumqi cannot escape the smog

Spices for sale at the Erdaoqiao Bazaar

After 47 very patient hours I have finally arrived in beautiful Urumqi, capital of Xinjiang Province in China’s far west. Fun facts about Xinjiang: Xinjiang (新疆) in Chinese means new frontier and Urumqi is said to be the city further from an ocean than any other city in the world. Xinjiang is majority Uighur and the only predominantly Muslim province in China. Facts are fun! Despite the heated interior, the cabin was noticeably cooler when I awoke in the morning and as the sun rose it became more and more apparent how far north we had traveled. The desert became blanketed in wispy snow banks and white-capped peaks loomed on the horizon.

After disembarking I decided that I could make the trip to my hostel by foot. Before I left I had made sure to take photos of different google maps of the city that I could later bring up on my iphone and use to navigate my way. It worked out well enough but the hostel unfortunately was clear on the other side of the city and after two hours or so of walking I finally found it. When I first hopped off the train I had to brace myself against the change in temperature but after a few minutes of lugging my bag around the city I became quite warm.

The hostel is nice but pretty empty. Apparently people don’t travel to Urumqi in the winter.

I decided to spend the day walking around and getting to know the neighborhood. Urumqi is a very interesting mix of ethnicities. It is strange to walk around a Chinese city and see such a diverse group of people walking around. I’ve become quite used to the ubiquitous Han cities that make up the rest of China. It’s nice though because I’m starting to blend into the crowd a bit better here. The city is comprised of Uighurs and other central Asian groups and Russians. In fact, the written signs are changed here as well. In most Chinese cities, all official (and most commercial) signs are written in Chinese characters, pinyin, and English. Here though the signs are written in Chinese characters, the pinyin has changed to Arabic, and the English has been replaced with Russian. I guess there’s no better time to practice my Russian! And most non-Chinese here sort of refuse to speak Chinese so this might be a hurdle.

Later on in the day I wandered into a bustling, off the beaten track, Uighur neighborhood. I’ve never seen a place so non-Chinese in China. I found this neighborhood because I happened to see the top of a large green mosque in the distance and decided to check it out. After wandering around and hesitating to take pictures (it felt weird and somehow inappropriate to take pictures here for some reason) I stepped into a small Uighur restaurant with just a few tables and sat down. A few people were sitting as well and all had their eyes fixed on a TV in the corner of the room watching a Chinese version of “funniest home videos”. I ordered while some of the men were peering through the window from the kitchen and laughing at a clip of some small dog on a bed jumping on his own face. I ordered skewered lamb kabobs with lamb meat, lamb liver, and lamb hearts, and although it sounds weird, it was awesome! I topped off the meal with a piece of flat bread and a roasted bun filled with boiled lamb and green onions. They eat a lot of lamb here...

Tomorrow I plan to do a bit of sightseeing. Apparently the international bazaar is worth checking out.

K2058 Part 2

(Back date 01/15/13)

As predicted, we did indeed break out into the vast Taklamakan Desert. And the further north we went the cleaner and more blue the air became. This is a huge relief to my lungs whom of which have gotten all too used to the tangible pollution in the Chengdu air! In fact, there was not even a cloud in the sky today, which, put together with the orange sand was really quite beautiful.
 

Taklamakan Desert view from the train

My hard sleeper cabin

Morning in Turpan, 2 hours from Urumqi

Nothing very exciting happened on the train. The lively bunch next to me repeated their first day's baijiu binge with the exception that today they were playing cards for money - like, a lot of money. It was fun watching them today passing around hundreds and hundreds of RMB. And I met some Chinese college students and talked to them awhile. I first met one of them, a girl who was sitting at one of the small side tables across from me, when she asked me (in Chinese) whether I was going to Urumqi. I said yes and we talked a bit about where I was from and other introductory bits. Then she asked if I was traveling alone and when I confirmed that it was just me she suddenly got super sad and seemed quite confused as to why I had no friends. I laughed a bit and assured her I had friends but that none of them were available to travel with me so instead she introduced me to her friends and we talked awhile until the car attendants turned out the lights and made me turn in. All in all it was a pretty cool experience. I found that if you know at least a little about the NBA, you always have something to talk about with Chinese college students.
Tomorrow morning I arrive in Urumqi, woo hoo! Before I left my new friend she looked at  me and said blankly I was not wearing enough clothes for Urumqi and that I will freeze to death. Hopefully I don't...

K2058

(Back date to 14 Jan 13)

K2058 Chengdu - Urumqi

Today was day one of my Xijiang travels - all of it spent aboard K2058, the Chengdu-Urumqi train. I hopped the train in the Chengdu North Train Station (a really impressive station actually - there’s a huge chandelier in the waiting rooms) without any problems or delays and said my last good bye to the city I’ve been living in for the last six months - 再见成都！

The train itself is much more comfortable than I had anticipated. All I was told about this train was that there was no air-conditioning which is kind of a big deal considering we are headed north for 48 hours. But actually so far the cabin is a cool 10 degrees celsius (50 degrees F) which is quite manageable. I have the top berth of a 3 bed bunk and my 5 neighbors are all quiet and elderly and just kind of sleep all day - works for me! The cabin beside me however is home to five men in their forties and they are wildly active. Actually, they brought two large bottles of local rice liquor (baijiu) and started drinking them as soon as we left the station (11AM)....they’re a fun group....

There was not much to see out of the windows today so I spent most of the day wandering up and down the length of the train which confirmed my suspicions that I am indeed the only non-Chinese passenger (not including, of course, the various Chinese minority groups aboard, which are many, Uighurs, and other Muslim minorities mainly). But it’s forcing me to speak Chinese which is a good thing! Tomorrow morning we break out of the Min Mountain range in northern Sichuan and head northwest along a track wedged between the Himalayan mountain range to the south and the Gobi Desert and Mongolia to the north before we descend into the Taklamakan Desert so the scenery should get better quickly. I’m hoping for a few good shots of the landscape from the train tomorrow.

And as far as I can tell there is not one outlet to charge my electronic items so I’m rationing my intake (which includes this computer)!

Time to sleep - more train stuff tomorrow!

Overview

This trip has been a long time in coming. I lived and studied in Beijing in early 2007 and quickly discovered the joys of travel. Since then I've dreamed of dedicating a solid amount of time meandering about the continent by rail, seeing all of what Eurasia has to offer. I've just finished a semester of Chinese language studies in Chengdu and am in my last phase of preparations before I hop my first train to kick start this trip on Monday.

The goal: travel from coast to coast by rail, Pacific to Atlantic, via the Eurasian continent.

The route: Chengdu, Xinjiang, Beijing, Russia, Scandinavia, Eastern Europe, Western Europe, London. 

The plan: post an entry (with some sample photos) every day or so that I have wifi access. 

Mostly I am set to travel. My immediate concerns though are the impending weather forecasts and plummeting temperatures. With -20 degree celsius averages in Xinjiang, I should be able to get a good taste of Siberia there and make necessary adjustments in Beijing before I head north to Mongolia and ultimately Russia.

I just payed 320 RMB ($45) for a 48 hour, non-heated, hard sleeper from Chengdu to Urumqi, Xinjiang. I leave Monday at 10.30. I could not be more excited!

Stay with me!