One Kangaroo and a White Elephant

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I am currently in Turpan. It is so different from the China that we have seen so far. . We feel like we have hit the real Silk Road now.

We left Dunhuang on Friday . It was a big day of driving through the desert - 500km and 14hrs of pretty much continuous driving. There were big sand dunes around Dunhuang (we hired bikes and rode out to the dunes which was good to get out of town a bit). The desert that we were travelling through on the way to Turpan was not that spectacular. The highlight was the sculptures along the roadside - a giant white elephant, a giant kangaroo, a giant horse and a giant camel. We saw lots of wild (real) camels as well.

We turned off the road at around 7pm and drove overland for a while. We were able to set up camp on a farmers' property. From the road the landscape looks so barren - but the famer had a really good irrigation system (more about that later in Turpan). He was growing fields of corn, carrots, eggplant and other things that I didn't recognise. He took us for a walk around his farm and proudly showed us his 500 year old willow tree (which was very impressive). We set up camp on his property and cooked on the open fire.

The next morning we set out for another long day of driving towards Turpan. We left at 7am and got in at around 5pm. On the way we stopped at Bezeklik and the Flaming Mountains (legend has it that the Prince who formed the basis of the story of Monkey crossed the Flaming Mountain on his journey). After visiting the Mogao caves (I will check my spelling later) - the caves themselves had been vandalised by Russian Archeologists and the Muslims in the 10th C - but the site was fantastic (I will post pictures of it later as they are on my other camera). It was stinking hot - probably about 42 degrees in the open ... but I quite enjoyed having the dry heat again.

We are now in Turpan. I will do another blog entry in Kashgar and update all this. Turpan moves into Uigur country so the Madarin that we have learnt so far doesn't work any more. Security is very tight here. We have four days in the Taklamakan desert and then we hit Kashgar.

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Photos

Desert Driving 3
Getting really bored now ....