China - The middle bits!

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Xi'an to Turpan and the edge of China Proper!

Well it's certainly been an interesting ride and a bit of a rollercoaster one at times! The intrepid site (www.intrepidtravel.com/trips/csr) has a more detailed itinerary if anyone is interested (and Cielle's blog actually reads in chronological order in one entry - www.travelblog.org/bloggers/Cielle) but I'm just going to blog about some of the highlights for me and publish lots of photos :-)

Heading west from Xi'an (and into the unknown for our tour leader Mark!) and off towards the "frontier" or what was considered the end of civilised China was rather cool. We stopped in a couple of really neat towns (that unfortunately I missed out on a bit through a combination of a raging head cold, digestion issues and trying to deal with a death in the family whilst being halfway across the world). We got to do some quite cool things - visit the end of the wall in Jiayuguan (and watch an early morning weapons training session) go for a camel ride just after dawn in Dunhuang before the hordes of domestic tourists turned up (all of us having to wear the most ridiculous orange bootie things that made us all look like muppets) and visit the Mogao Grottoes (ancient caves decorated by Buddhist monks, some of which dated back 1000 years and showing a range of influences from the Silk Road information superhighway)

We crossed the border into Xinjiang on our final overnight train into Turpan - the hottest place in China due to it's location below sea level in the middle of the Turpan Basin - the highest recorded temperature is something like 49 degrees, so we were lucky it only got to early 40's! Of course now that we were into Xinjiang province where, unlike the rest of China, 'minority' peoples outnumber the Han Chinese, it is predominantly a Muslim population, so we girls had to cover up - and I can tell you, a polyester headscarf in that kind of heat is NOT comfortable! Despite discomfort, we got to see some awesome things; the lovely old village of Tuyoq (that the Chinese Tourism Machine now charges an entry fee for); one of the wonders of China - the Emin Mosque in all it's sundried brick glory; the huge ruined ancient city of Jiaohe which the anthropologist in me was just blown away by; and the impressive ancient irrigation systems called karez that has allowed settlement in the Turpan area since (according to some site I just googled) 103BC - allowing the region to not only exist, but be famous for their grapes and the raisins/sultanas made from them :-)

Next on our itinerary was Heavenly Lake, but I'm going to put that into a separate entry... so please, read on!

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Photos

The last (or first) fort
Quite different from the Eastern end, made using local materials...

Weapons practise
Early morning Tai Chi - with big pointy sticks :-)

Camel at Overhanging Wall
Not that the wall was really overhanging, but there was a pretty view back towards the town across the desert

Camels are cool!
Hehe... please note the attractive orange booties. Muppets I tell you - if only they'd been furry :-)

Sunset over sand
And our final night train to Turpan

Mosque at village of Tuyoq
With Flaming Mountains in the background

Cielle at Emin Mosque
Not channelling an incognito movie star, just being culturally sensitive :-)

Walking among the ruins
of the city of Jiaohe. It was a rather warm day - umbrellas were fab, carrying your own shade!

Locally cooked lunch
with cheesy grins. Yummy hand pulled noodles though!