Day 6: September 20, 2007 We woke up really early to check out of our hotel and get ourselves on the bus. We took about a 4 hour ride from Urumqi to Turpan, through the Gobi Desert, which wasn't as spectacular as one would have imagined. Or at least not the part we went through. It consisted mostly of just endless gray and brown -- maybe I slept through all the good parts. We got to the Flaming Mountains, which we all knew we were supposed to hike, but what we had not been informed of was that our "hike" actually [View Full Entry]

---

---

Day 4: September 18, 2007 So we had a nauseatingly early wakeup call that morning, after maybe only 5 hours of sleep, but we were tempted out of bed with the offer of a "Western Breakfast." Unfortunately, the Urumqi Mansion's idea of a Western breakfast consisted of stale white bread, jam, cucumbers, eggs, and some kind of substance we could only guess was their attempt at spam. Their biggest promise was coffee...which, while not so tasty, was still coffee. Then we headed to the local arts college to watch a traditional dance class. It seemed to me like it was the [View Full Entry]

---

---

Day 1: September 15, 2007 We arrived in Kashgar by plane at around 2 in the morning, so the 8 am wakeup call was pretty brutal. Despite the fact that China is about the size of the United States, they only officially operate on one time zone. We were operating on Beijing time, while all the locals in Kashgar went by their own local time, 2 hours behind us. So even though it was officially 8 am when we woke up, it was just getting light outside, which was pretty weird. After breakfast, which was the exact same fo [View Full Entry]

---

---