Sake and Impromptu 4000 mile trips

Friday - 

I'm not going to elaborate much on my friday night, because lets face it, in true CMC style, I don't really think I can. 

We went out for all you can eat and drink Tepanyaki which was amazing, but the sake and beer consumption definitely set the tone for the night.  By the end we were so drunk that we invited out waiter to come out with us, which he did, and then tore through a few bars before ending up at Vicks.  The African war lords that I hung out with before were there in their same booth again and recognized me so I spent most of the night with them because I couldn't find my people.   I also ran into a kid from CMC and got an offer to sing for a band. All in all a very eventful night. 

Moving on.. 

I completely changed my itinerary around because when I went to go buy a train ticket to day they only had hard seats for the next four days, not even soft seat.  Instead I am leaving at 7:45 am for Urumqi WAY in the west of China; it is the green dot on the map.  (Tibet fell through because it was too expensive, and if I sink that kinda money I don't want to half ass it; I would want to take the train to Tibet then go overland my base camp into Nepal and down into northern India, which I do not have money to do right now.  In the west of China I'm planning on going to: 

Turpan:  home of the Flaming Mountains, second lowest place in the world and home to a thriving wine industry.

Kashgar: the mother of all markets: 200,000 nomadic traders stop by every sunday to sell their wares.  This was a main hub on the old Silk Road. 

Karakoram Highway: The way to Pakistan, this highway is supposed to be superbly beautiful

Then I'm going to hop back on the train an take it to Xiahe the most important Tibetan Buddhist temple outside of Lhasa. From there I'm going to hop back on for another 20 hour journey of Xi'an, home of the terra-cotta warriors, and hopefully, if I have time, I'll get to spend a few days in ShangHai at the end. 

All in all it will be an epic journey, and it would be a pretty good bet that at some point i'll break down and catch a flight since the entire thing by train is upwards of 60 hours I think and I tend to get a little disillusioned with train travel after the first 50. I just bought a bunch of good books though so I'm looking forward to getting into those and watching China go by outside my window. 

The red is where I am planning on going.  The farthest West city that the red goes to is Kashgar or Kashi.