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Local Kazakh & horses!
Northern foot of Kazawuquntag mountain
All the ingredients were there to make this trip unforgettable from the snow covered mountain to the desert and breathtaking red mountain/ sand dunes/canyon, to the ethnic diversity encountered along the way (Kazak, Kyrgyz, Tajik, Uighur & Chinese Han to mention only a few) and well...the fact that I finally got to follow the steps of many before me along the silk road!!
Add to this that one of my best friend Chanh who has been based the past six years in Shanghai too was part of the first part of the adventure, and this make the whole experience truly unforgettable! Overall Itinerary:
Urumuqi
Bai Yang Gou (green pasture/ Yurt/ horseback riding)
Turpan (desert/ancient cities/flaming mountains)
Tian Che (crystal water mountain lake)
Kashghar (the door to central Asia, fascinating)
Karakul lake (3600m, kyrgyz settlement/ surrounded by snow covered 7000+ meters mountains/ Yurt!)
Tashkurgan (by the Tajikistan border/ Tajik native population/ stone city)
and
accross the desert from Kashgar to Urumuqi with a stop in the oasis of Kuche (beautiful mosque/ Friday market/ breathtaking canyon & Kizil caves)
How? mmm.. that's the interesting part... guess a bit of everything: plane, bus, minivan, train, car, horse, donkey, camel, motobike, on foot & using a motor hand glider...
Way too many places and experiences to summarize everything in one blog...so this is the first chapter, enjoy the reading and pictures!
First stop, Bai Yang Gou, ready for some snow, horseback riding and discovery of Urumuqi southern pastures!
As always any trip in China without guide starts with the usual "find the bus station" and the one chinese sites refer to is most of the time not the correct one! So, after a bit of 'sightseeing' around Urumuqi we finally got on our way to the "hongqiao gonggongqiche zhan" (for some reason, this one is not listed...)
As we got closer, we could already see the green pastures with the
impressive snow covered Karawuquntag mountain in background, we would pass by tiny villages, locals on horses and lots of sheep...started to see more snow as well and by the
time we reached our first stop "Bai Yang Gou" also referred to as the "West White Poplar Gully" (75km South of Urumuqi) & the Yurt where we would be spending our first night, the "pasture" was partially covered with fresh snow!!
First ‘thermal shock’ especially coming from Urumuqi where the weather is warm and dry!
One of the beauty of traveling in Xinjiang is that it only gets dark between 10 and 11pm as the entire China is based on the Beijing time, so although we had spent 5 hours in the plane and an additional 1h and half in the bus, we still had a few hours ahead to explore the area "local style" ie. on horses!
Our guides were
local Kazakhs and within few minutes we were already learning a few key words in their dialect while going through snow covered pasture. They were truly friendly and eager to share with us the natural wonders of the area while getting us more familiar with the local horses (shorter/ more nervous & with an unforgettable full galop!),
Went up to
3000 meters for this first day, across emerald green forest and then on foot for the last 100
meters to see the waterfall, nothing breathtaking but the "walk/ ice skating" to reach the fall was fun!
Then time to go back to the Yurt for some dinner & warm up by the coal stove...and I guess that's when our host told us to enjoy our dinner, showed us how to 'close' the door, the few candles on the side (no electricity) before leaving until the next morning 10am thus letting us fully 'enjoy' our stay in his yurt!
Short backtrack here...the Yurt was surrounded by snow... The tiny stove was doing a pretty good job at the beginning so we had a nice warm environment to start the evening and get to know the only two other guests (Chinese) staying in the Yurt next door, lots of fun trying on local traditional outfits before moving to our own yurt and start to lay down as many blanket as we could find as the yurt was really getting cold!
Got woke up in the middle of the night by the cold and realized the fire was nearly completely extinct (no wonder it was getting so cold...)... Obviously,
that's when you end up exploring the area surrounding the yurt using the flash light to find where the coal is stored, and then end up trying to start the stove again using well...what you can find... in our case, disposable wooden chopsticks & toilet paper...clearly not the best, but after a good half an hour started to get some live embers...pfff....still cold (about 5 degrees outside) but manageable!
Slept nearly like a baby after that and waked up at 10am with the sound of 30+ chinese tourists who came to the area for half a day...mmm...
By the time we had breakfast and packed they were gone already (pfff...) and we were again the two of us, chatting by the road with local Kazakh while waiting for THE bus to stop by! (never really know when to expect one, part of the fun!)
Guess that’s when two locals arrived full speed on their motorbike with a black sheep in between them, Chanh always full of good feelings pointed out as they were getting the sheep on the grass
“the sheep must be sick and they are going to treat him” well…by the time she had finished her sentence, the oldest guy had a knife ready and
while helped by the other guy to bring the sheep to a standstill on the grass by their motorbike, he was prompt to slit his throat…mmm…before cutting the end of one of the leg to blow air in between the flesh and the wool, “balloon style’, before shearing the sheep still using the one knife…
Really impressed by the technique and speed to which the entire wool was removed in one piece, while the flesh never actually touched the ground…All along the guy was explaining us how he was proceeding, clearly happy that we shown interest and ended up asking us to send him the pictures we had taken by the post office! Hahaha (printing those as I write this blog)
The bus then arrived when the guy had finished with the sheep shearing, and after the usual “Roche” (“Bye Bye” in local Uyghur dialect), on the road we were again!
Next stops:
Hundreds years of dust...welcome to the Gobi Desert!
Kashgar, the gate to Central Asia! Vibrant & colourful!
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Bregt
non-member comment
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Compliments on your beautiful pictures. Why do they blow into a dead sheep ?