Heaven in a yurt

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After spending the night in Urumqi, the capital of the Uighur minority Xinjiang province, we headed 2 hours out of town to Tian Chi – Heavenly Lake. We arrived to the most spectacular sight…a huge lake in shades of blue I can not describe, rolling green hills covered in Fur trees and snow capped mountains on the horizon. We quickly escaped from the tour group masses and made our way down to the rocky shore line, from there we passed the concrete touristy yurts (traditional round tents used by Kazakhs) until we were totally alone in the beautiful quite wilderness. After around 2 hours as we rounded another lush green cove there was a simultaneous gasp as we saw across the lake the place we would spend the night. A perfect green valley dotted with trees, horses and an authentic yurt we knew we had to stay in. When we made it to the cove we meet ‘Mama Kazakh’ who was busy pounding her flour and offered for us to stay with her for around $7 each including food. We spent some time sitting with our feet in the icy water just staring at the perfection around us, I decided the cove could be the set of a movie as each rock and tree seemed to be perfectly placed. Later we paid some locals to take us for a horse ride, a little scary at first as we made our way up and around the rocky mountain valleys offering even more amazing views. At one point we were stopped by a herd of mountain goats strewn across the path and ultimately had to return home as a big dust storm quickly blew in. As the sun finally set we climbed into ‘Mama Kazakh’ tiny mud and log cabin to help prepare dinner, it was a tight squeeze with the 3 of us and her baby lamb (she appeared to take joy in acting out to us numerous times the lamb’s mum was dead….not sure if it was dinner or not!). We watched as ‘Mama Kazakh’ made the dough for noodles and chopped the veggies from her garden then got to help her pull the noodles to add to our soup. We tried our hardest to finish the huge bowls of noodle laden soup and plates of bread she placed in front us after which the sun had finally set so we settled in for sleep. We laid our mats down and pulled up the thick sheep wool blankets as it was surprising cold and had the best night sleep of the whole trip. Despite guide books and forums claiming Tian Chi has become too touristy you only have to walk a short way to get past all that and into a world that seems to be anywhere but China.

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