Xinjiang: Turpan to Urumqi

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We head via bus 3+ hours to Urumqi from Turpan. Urumqi is the capital of Xinjiang province. On our drive over, there is nice scenery - view of the snow on Heavenly Mt, large salinized lake, wind farms, and mountains. Quite a nice drive.

Except for... ok, this is gross, beware:
We stopped at a rest stop and I had to go to the bathroom since I had two cups of coffee with breakfast - it was the most horrrrrrendous facility I've ever seen in my life. As I walked towards the women's entrance there was already urine, toilet paper, feces on the ground. I take a peek in - three holes, no lights, no doors, no water. The "holes" had not been emptied for who knows how long so the toilet paper and people's feces were overflowing. EWW. It was horrible. The surrounding area was all barbed wired so people did not trespass... another lady just climbed over and I followed her lead and just peed behind the building - very close to the highway. Oh well. Absolutely disgusting. I will never forget how gross that was.

So we get to Urumqi and we first visit this bazaar area - called Erdao Qiao. It means "second bridge" in Chinese. There are tons of stalls of people selling dried fruit, fresh fruit, handcrafts, people on the street selling delicious naan bread, lamb skewers, meat, "cheese", pomegranates, etc. It was fun. I bought some bread and got a 1 rmb shoe shine from some little Uighur boy. You can't see very clearly from the photos, but you can get an idea of what the Uighur people look like - don't look Chinese, right?

We had lunch - Uigher food which again, I did not particularly like. More mutton, more skewers, etc.

After lunch we visited the Xinjiang Museum in Urumqi. The best part of the museum was the mummy exhibit. There was a cemetery disovered in Xinjiang - and because of the very hot weather, these bodies were dried and preserved. One body was almost 4000 years old! You could still see all the bones, skin, hands, etc. Totally disguisting, but neat at the same time. It was somewhat interesting. There's also an exhibit about the 13 ethnic minorities in Xinjiang which was OK. Guess who we bumped into at the museum? Our Korean train roommates (for the second time)!

We headed to the Urumqi airport to transfer to Kashgar and waited two hours. I bought yogurt raisins that were disappointing.

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Photos

Bread for sale!
So delicious - nan bread for Y1.

Drive to Urumqi
Salinized lake - see the white salt?

Balloons for sale
Uighur boy selling balloons

Erdaoqiao
Busy with Uighurs filling the street

Shoe shine
I got duped into a shoe shine boy a little boy.

What's this for sale?
I thought these were rocks... turned out to be cheese! Of course I bought some to taste... yukky.

Comments

[tf]

i'm so ignorant. i didn't know you were almost in the old Russia!!! or am i not reading carefully.

[SF Girl]

Map
Check out the map on the Kashgar entry - I've marked the route and cities I visited.

[christina]

ew!! that "bathroom" makes the squatties sound clean and modern.