The Silk Road, China

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Hi,
Our first stop in Xinjiang province was Turpan. Once an important point along the silk road, as the two sites of ruins of old cities that are here can indicate. The city is 54 m below sea level, in the middle of a desert, and it is very hot.
The city is also famous for growing grapes and making wine, which is strange considering the climate. The are many vineyards in the surrounding areas, and also some in the city itself.
The population here, and actually from here on, is Muslim. The people are Uigur, which are related to Turkish people, and they came here during the time that the silk road was active. This makes this area very special, with a mixture of China and Turkey - languages, street signs, people on the street, food - everything is a mixture. The Uigur people use a language similar to Turkish, with Arabic alphabet. They have bread and shis-kebabs, Turkish-like hats, the women are covered, and so on. There are mosques instead of Buddhist or Taoist temples.
There are many interesting sites around Turpan - old mosques, the ruins, more Buddhist caves, an oasis, some desert sites, etc.
We decided to ignore most of them, and went to a small village located in a green valley, and has just about everything in it, except tourists.
The village is build around a mosque, which is much more impressive than the houses around it. The houses are made of mud bricks. There are vineyards all around. There is a small complex of Buddhist caves as well (not an impressive one, but still interesting to see how many sites of such caves exist). We could see the local Uigur people in their real life and not in a place made for tourism. It was very interesting. We walked in this small village for a few hours, despite the heat, just enjoying the different atmosphere and the different culture.
On the way back from the village we stopped at one of the regular tourists sites called The Flaming Mountain. When it's hot and the air looks like it's moving (like the way it looks above fire), and when the sun is red and colors the mountains red, they claim the mountain looks like a flame. I think you need to be very creative in order to make such a story...
At night we went to eat at the local food Market, and had some shis-kebabs. It was a great break from the regular Chinese food, and reminded me a little bit of home. With this, and the pita bread, all I was missing was Humus... But even they don't make it here!
The next day we went to a famous mosque in Turpan called Emin Minaret. This 18th century mosque has a 40 m round tower, and looks different than regular mosques.
At this point our group separated - Matt went back to Chengdu and Shay decided to go straight to Kashgar without stopping on the way in some interesting places.
We took the late bus to Urumqi, the biggest city in Xinjiang, and not such an interesting one. We had dinner at the night market again, some shis-kebabs, which will become our regular dinner for this region of China.
That's it for now,
R.

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Photos

Camel in the village
All camels here are double humped.

Selling real bread
Pita bread, in China!!!

Comments

[yaron and hagit]

you promised
you promised no tourists in Toyuq (the village whos name you forgot) but the reality is that there are no WESTERN tourists. as allways there are a few Chinese ones :) other then that your blog is a perfect guidbook. too bad you did not record your travels in SEA as well

[R Eldar]

Thanks!
Now everybody can know where to go near Turpan... And don't worry - the rest of my trip will be published very soon... R.

[sam]

cool
That seems really interesting and i want to go there and see all the cool stuff