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Published: October 7th 2013
The Danxia Mountains.
The Danxia ranges have been formed over millions of years as reddish sandstone has eroded
We hop on our train to Urumqi, China, and are pleasantly surprised to find there is
no one else in our cabin. We spread out our stuff, plug in the computer and spend
the next 30 hours watching movies, sleeping, eating junk food and watching the
desert out the window. On arriving in Urumqi we quickly realize we are now in China.
Until now we haven’t really experienced any major culture shocks. Each country
has seemed to have flowed quite nicely onto the next, but here everyone stares at
you, anything you can imagine is being sold on the sidewalks and the streets are
exceptionally crowded. We find the one hostel in the city. It´s nice enough but smells
a lot like stale piss and nearly everyone happily spits on the floor, which I hear we
will have to get used to until we are much further south.
Urumqi was a major centre on the Silk Road during China's Tang dynasty and you
can see it is now a very multicultural city, with often four languages being printed
on street signs. They use Chinese characters, Russian alphabet, Arabic script, and
sleeper train
Almaty, Kazakhstan to Urumqi, China. English. There is obvious tension between the different ethnicities and sometimes
also violent clashes, especially between local Uighurs, an ethnic Turkic Muslim
group, and the increasing number of majority Han Chinese. We could feel the
tension as there was a very strong military presence in the city and it was often
rather intimidating to come across large groups of army personnel with very hefty
guns.
We spend the next couple of days in the parks, as they are so entertaining.
Everybody of every age spends their afternoons in the parks consumed in a variety
of activities, small children have rollerblading classes, teenage boys break dance,
women as old as 80 use the free exercise machines and in the evenings everybody
gets together next to a stereo to practice a dance/aerobics routine. We spend
our evenings trying sometimes delicious but sometimes also disgusting snacks at
the lively night markets, with food ranging from very tasty veggie dumplings to a
selection of roasted bugs.
We don’t have a clear route on how we will travel through China so ask around, we
are told Dunhuang should be our next stop,
Double Rainbow
Keeping ourselves entertained on the 22 hour trip. to see the impressive sand dunes of the
Gobi desert and the Mogao Caves. We hop on a bus to head south to Dunhuang
and only 5 minutes into the ride we have a small collision with a taxi. Thankfully
no one is hurt but we spend an hour waiting for the bus driver to convince the Taxi
driver not to call the police. We meet Brian whose grandparents are originally from
China, but he has lived his life in the States. He speaks a bit of Chinese and is able
to help us quickly find a nice hostel where we find a cheap room for the three of us.
We arrive in Dunhuang at 6am and want to leave the following morning, so after a
quick power nap we head out to the Mogao Caves. It is very crowded, with nearly all
the tourists being Chinese. We are not allowed to take photos but the caves but the
many Buddhist sculptures inside them are very impressive.
The Mogao caves are also known as the Caves of a Thousand Buddha’s. The
structure has 492 temples and is the most
Gobi Desert
travelling through the Gobi. Urumqi to Dunhuang. well known of the Chinese Buddhist
grottoes and also one of the three famous ancient Buddhist sculpture sites of China.
That evening we head out to watch the sunset at one of the dunes. We pick up a
couple of beers and some food from the street market and leave for what we expect
will be a quiet evening watching the sunset. It turns out to be packed. There are
thousands of people doing the same thing and a lot of tourist activities as well; camel
rides, paragliding and flights are all on offer. Still, we trek up the dune with everyone
else and do get to see a stunning sunset, with a beer, lying in the warm sand. The
next morning we catch a bus to Jainzghaou, to see the “mouth” of the great Chinese
wall. We arrive at midday in the small city, where we have already booked a hotel
online but are surprised to arrive and find they don’t accept foreigners. At first we
were a bit confused and insist on staying as there doesn’t seem to be anywhere
else remotely in our budget but notice
the young woman on reception seems
very stressed and is starting to get a bit tearful. We let it go and fork out a bit for a
more expensive hotel that will let us stay. Previously, in Kazakhstan, we had met
a fun French couple, who had come from China and highly recommended that we
hitchhike.
We had forgotten their recommendation until now but prices to cover the tourist
spots we want to go seem to be expensive, so we decide to cut costs by hitchhiking.
The next day we walk to the toll bridge with our sign. Our next stop is Zhangoue and
we had the receptionist from the hotel write a sign for us in Hanzi. We are picked up
by the first car. Unfortunately we have no common language to communicate in but
we are able to make some very basic conversation with our translator.
Zhangoue is, by Chinese standards, a pretty small city with just 1.5 million. You can
see cranes building new apartment blocks everywhere, so it is obviously expanding
as fast as everywhere else. We notice quickly that everyone stares at us and
Entertainment in the parks
The peoples park of Urumqi. Where people of all ages get together for activities! we are
often asked to stop to have our pictures taken. A Danish guy we met in Urumqi had
recommend we try see the Dixan Mountains which he hasn´t personally seen but
had heard were incredible. He showed us pictures on the internet which we are sure
are photo-shopped as the ranges seem to be blue, yellow and pink. We were a bit
sceptical but promise him we will try to see what it´s all about. It turns out to be the
most amazing natural feature we have ever seen. From green and pink to yellow,
brown and blue. We nearly miss it, assuming that we will just be able to stroll around,
seeing as it is a natural feature, but on arriving we find we have to pay and we have
no cash. Nor is there ATM machine. Luckily, two friendly young Chinese boys help us out and pay for our entrance fee.
The next morning we head out to hitchhike to Lanzhou and are again picked up very
quickly but unfortunately again with a language barrier. The ride is quiet and we are
disappointed we
can’t chat. They stop for lunch at a place which is definitely out of
our budget but we feel guilty to say we can´t eat. Plates and plates of delicious
noodles, veggie and meat dishes are brought out and we resign to digging in and
facing the bill later, but when we are finished they insist on paying and refuse any
money we try to offer them. Soon after we arrive in Lanzhou overwhelmed with the
hospitality we have just received and say goodbye to find our next couch-surfing
host, Kevin, who has kindly offered to take us in, even though he has a few friends
staying. He is a Peace Corp from the States and is teaching English in China for the
next two years. On arriving, we are greeted by a cold beer and some fun
conversation. Kevin takes us out to a few nice bars where we get to have jam
session with him and some of the other Peace Corps and the next couple of days we
look around Lanzhou, enjoying the famous Lanzhou noodles and soaking in the
crazy atmosphere of the night
markets, which are a lot bigger than in the previous
cities and where you seem to be able to see and buy anything you can think of, from
puppies to women lying around with cucumber on their eyes trying to sell you face
masks. We leave after a couple of days and attempt to hitchhike to Miyanyang,
where we have a woofing place organized. We head out but after an hour we still
haven’t managed to find the right toll bridge to leave from and are continually told we
are in the wrong place. Finally a car stops and the man tells us he can drop us off at
an intersection where we can get onto the right road. An hour later we are dropped
off somewhere on the highway. We again attempt to keep going but it is getting late
and everybody seems to be indicating we are in the wrong place. We are finally
picked up but something seems strange as we don´t think we are going in the right
direction. Five minutes later they drop us off at a bus station and ask us for money.
We tell them we are not paying, grab our bags and walk back to the highway and
hitchhike back to Lanzhou. We are thankfully greeted by Kevin with a cold beer and
told we can stay at his house another night. We decide it´s obviously too
complicated to keep hitchhiking so organize a train to take us directly to Miyanyang,
which will take us 20 hours.
The train trip is hell. All the sleepers are taken up so we are forced to take seats.
There are obviously more people than seats. Every five minutes someone comes
through the train trying to sell you a puzzle or a painting and when it´s time to sleep
there are people sleeping everywhere, in the aisles, on top of you, even on the
bathroom sink. Eric blows up a lilo purchased for swimming in Kazakhstan and
makes himself comfy under the seats and at one stage I end up sleeping on the floor
outside the very smelly toilet.
We arrive exhausted but are picked up by Lin, our woofing host, who is in high spirits
and after taking us out to lunch
Mogao grottoes
Only picture we were allowed to take from the outside. at a nice local fish restaurant he brings us to the
farm.
It´s not exactly what we had imagined. All the other wwoofing farms we have
been to have been small scale. Mainly veggies, a few chickens and goats living
free range. It turns out we are at a large pig farm. We are told there are 2000 pigs,
which they raise and sell when they are big. We won´t be working with the pigs and
apparently our work will be mainly weeding a few hours a day. We get a glimpse of
the pigs, some are able to move around but others are in cages where they can´t
even turn around. After our experience with the sheep slaughtering in Georgia we
have thought a lot about how we eat. The sheep we had killed in Georgia had lived
free range and until it´s death had probably had a reasonably stress free life but
it´s death could have been quicker, here it seems to be the opposite so it will be
interesting to see how we feel at the end of our stay.
Our stay at Lin’s Farm is
Dunes in Dunhuang
Hundreds of tourists heading up to watch the sunset. very relaxed, we have our own apartment and we spend
most of our time playing with Lin’s very sweet family and the other 5 volunteers. At
the farm we are able to play tennis and basketball and swim, and in the evenings we
watch movies together. All the meals are like we are at a gourmet restaurant but we
decide not to eat the pork.
All the volunteers seem to be leaving on the same day so we decide to make a trip
out of it and invite Lin to join us for a weekend in Chengdu.
Chengdu, also known as the Panda Bear Capital, is another big, bustling city but
there are areas where the architecture is very traditional and aesthetically very
pretty. You can find a lot of temples and people doing group activities in the parks,
but it´s easy to get lost in the lively crowds as the population is 15 million. We stay
3 days browsing the markets and Clement (another volunteer) Eric and I get up
extra early on our last day to see the panda bears. We are told we need to be there
around 8 to see the pandas out of their cages because they are apparently pretty
lazy and only active when being fed. We seem to have arrived a bit too late as it is
already pretty hot when we get there and all the pandas are sitting in their cages
only moving to grab another stick of bamboo. Only Eric is lucky, and manages to see
the pandas outside playing with each other and being fed. We also see red pandas
and the breeding centre where we get to see some little 3 month- old pandas lying in
their incubators.
After seeing the pandas, the three of us head straight to the train station to jump on
a 17 hour train ride to Kunming. We had vowed our last train trip would be the last,
unless we took a sleeper, but again we are stuck with seats and have another long
night trying to find somewhere to sleep. Our new travel partner, Clement, is from the
south of France and has been travelling since November last year all throughout
Asia. He is to be taking the same route
Sand Dunes, Dunhuang.
Watching the sunset with a cold beer a melon and the lovely Brian from the states. as us down towards south East Asia. We get
on well and are happy to have a friend as we are getting bored of being just the two
of us.
The first thing we do when we arrive in Kunming is find the Visa Office for Vietnam.
We give them our passports and are told to come back in 4 working days. That gives
us a bit of time to explore the Province of Yunnan. We decide to leave Kunming the
next day and head to a small city called Dali, which is close to Tibet and the border
to Laos. We start hitch-hiking again, as the roads don´t seem to be so complicated
anymore and we easily get a ride to Dali even though there are now three of us. We
arrive without any idea of where to stay. We stroll through the streets and it seems to
be that all the hostels are full or far too expensive. We are starting to get a little
depressed, thinking we have come all this way only to have to fork out for
somewhere really expensive. Thankfully we ask the
right person, and he takes us to
a local hiking and biking club where we are able to pay 1€ the night. We even get a
free tour through the city and are shown a student café where we can eat like kings
for around a euro. Dali is surrounded by Mountains and has a beautiful lake only five
minutes away by bike. It has a really laid-back atmosphere with artists of all types
living and working there. Many buskers, jewellery makers and hippies, that probably
came in the 60´s and never left. We imagine it to be a bit like Nepal or Tibet. On one
of the cooler days Clement and Eric make a nice bike tour around the Lake but most
days are very humid so we spend most of the time at the club, chatting with the
Chinese travellers, playing with the clubs puppy and eating at our favourite café.
When we eventually leave we sign our names on the wall, as we are the first
foreigners to have stayed at the club, and head out to hitch-hike back to Kumming.
When arriving in Kunming
we immediately pick up our passports from the Vietnam
embassy and start trying to hitchhike to the boarder as we only have 24 hours until
our visas run out. Because hitch-hiking seems to have worked so well for us until
now, we decide to take the risk and attempt to hitchhike to the border within that
time. We have a bad start. We get a ride for about an hour but seem to be dropped
at the wrong toll bridge. It´s already dark and there are not many cars passing.
There are also now three of us. We want to stick together but it limits the number of
people able to pick us up. Finally a lovely girl and her mother stop, who want to help
us. Her English is great and she explains to us some of the roads are blocked and
we are in the wrong place. Her mother is tired so she gives a friend a call to pick her
mum up before taking us to a toll bridge where she says we might be able to get a
ride. We thank her profusely and then
wait. The girl working at the toll bridge is also
great and asks everybody that stops if they can take us but no one seems to be
going in our direction. At around 9pm she finally finds us somebody and we jump in
very relieved. He even takes us further than expected but the road is very bumpy
and Leah manages to vomit into her bags rain protector. He eventually stops in a
small mining town where we decide we should stay for the rest of the night. The
town seems to consist of only men and brothels. We have a beer with a group of
guys that insist on taking many photos with us before finding us a cheap hotel that is
also probably a brothel as most of the rooms are only for rent by the hour. We all
have a well deserved sleep before getting up nice an early to start on our way again.
All in all it takes us 10 cars until we arrive very thankful at the border, with 3 hours
until the border would close. Phew!
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georgina christensen
non-member comment
WOW!