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Hi (should I change my greetings from one blog to another? are you getting bored?)
Near Urumqi there is a beautiful lake up in the mountains called Tian Chi, or The Heaven Lake. The mountain range is called Tian Shan - The Heaven Mountain, and is a long range that crosses Xinjiang from east to west.
The lake is about 2000 m high, and therefore it is a little cooler there, which is a nice break from the heat of the desert. We heard that it is a nice place to spend a night, and that there are great views and nice walking trails there, but that the food is very basic (in other words - bad). So we bought some supplies and took a bus...
The lake area is populated by Kazakh people, most of them nomads that go up the mountains in the summer and go back down in the winter. They live in yurts, which are kind of round tents made of wood. They say it takes them an hour to build it and an hour to pack it, and it's a very impressive house for a nomad.
When we arrived a local guy offered us a yurt
to sleep in (he even knew how to offer it in Hebrew). We went to his yurt, which was half way around the lake, away from all the other (Chinese) tourists. The scenery there was great, we walked around the lake enjoying the forest, the mountains, and the lake itself.
The place is just perfect for relaxing, and I was sitting there for a few hours in the sun reading Bialik by the lake... so surreal.
We spent the night in that yurt, on the floor with all their colorful blankets, and had a dinner cooked by the Kazakh woman. The food wasn't so bad as we were warned it would be. The owner also told us that a German guy bought himself a yurt and shipped it home because he liked it so much. Wander what he is going to do with it.
The next day was colder and a little rainy, so we decided not to stay for another night, and we took a bus back to Urumqi.
We wanted to see some less visited parts of Xinjiang, not on the main tourist road, and we asked around a little bit, and decided to go to Yining, in
north west Xinjiang, on the border with Kazakhstan. The area is supposed to be beautiful, with green valleys and some nice villages.
We took a long night bus and arrived to the town. We first went to a small village called Huiyuan, which has a 19th century drum tower. The village really looks like something from another country - the people, the cars, the houses, the houses. I was sitting there in the main square behind the drum tower and thinking to myself - is this still China???
And then, for the first time in this trip, somebody approached me and offered me drugs. It was really funny because just a few minutes before that we were talking about how strange it is that China is the only place in the world where tourists are not being offered drugs all the time. Of course I refused...
The next day we went to Chapuchaer, a village where Xibo minority lives. Or so they say, because we couldn't find them. We just found a museum about them. They are well known for their archery skills, and a guide in the museum showed us how they do it (she was quite good), and
then I tried as well (and I even hit the target!).
After that we wanted to go to the nature, and we asked around in some travel agencies about the grasslands of the area, but this is really a whole story by itself...
R.
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Tian Chi - The Heaven Lake
the FISH
non-member comment
SHLO TISHTE LI SHAM HASHISH, ATA SHOMEA ?
I took the time to re-read your log and view the images. The National Geographic couldn't do it better... Try to send them a link, I trully think you have a job offer promised (and I'm not talking XIV here).