Adventures All Over: Urumqi, Tian Chi and the Train Ride to Kashi

Day 1: Fly into Urumqi (4 hours) pronounced: ooroomchee

I was slightly disappointed when I got off the plane because Urumqi is just like Lonely Planet says: industrial and dusty with no camels or people in funny hats in sight. XinJiang is one of the most unstable "autonomous" regions in China on account of its overwhelming number of minorities and its short history as a part of China, so the chinese government has been relentlessly pursuing a "Hanification" policy in Urumqi for the past decade, awarding Han chinese money and benefits if they move there. The whole area is home to populations of Kyrgiks, Tajiks, Kazakis, Uighers, all whom drifted over borders during the course of the Silk Road's history.

My trip got off to an auspicious start meeting two Israeli guys at the hostel. One had been living in India for four months, and the other had been backpacking across the Stans by himself for the past four months, so hard core travelers. The former had just received a tiny bag of Israeli coffee from home and with great ceremony and much rhapsodizing about the motherland we enjoyed it, the first cup of coffee in a few months for all of us. It tasted like cloves or nutmeg, probably very similar to Turkish coffee.

Making coffee with much pomp and circumstance

Later I had a wonderful dinner of streetfood: a pomegranate and a sweet potato, and then we went in search of a bar, and in doing so got lost in a construction site. After jumping many fences we found our way out which I think was solely due to their israeli army skills since I contributed very little to the whole escape.

Day 2 Tian Chi:

Woke up (9 am beijing time 7 "local" time) to get the bus to Tian Chi before the chinese tourists showed up with their cameras. Note: all of China is in one time zone (fuck if I know why) but because Urumqi is at least two hours behind Beijing everything is done on either "local time", or "Beijing time" - its very confusing and you have to make sure you know which is being used when people are quoting times or you might show up local time and find out your train went at Beijing time.

Anyway, after lots of attempts to find the bus station, including walking into a restricted zone and having policemen run after me yelling in chinese, I found the right bus, and after some driving made it to Tian Chi (Heaven Lake). It was very pretty, but in true chinese style it was hard to escape the techno music blaring from the gift shop at the head of the lake. Chinese tourists rarely venture 50 meters away from this or the bus, so once I started walking around the lake things became much nicer and chinese free.

Pretty waterfall on the walk down that was deserted because all of the chinese tourists took little buses up and down the hill and were too weak to hike. losers

Tian Chi

Cool little abandoned / overgrown pagoda I found on the top of a hill

I couldn't find a public bus home so I bartered passage on a chinese tour group bus whose passengers were all uber perplexed to see a non chinese climb aboard. The tour guide actually had to announce over the loudspeaker which country I was from so that people would sotp pestering me.

Over the course of my two week trip I got guessed every nationality possible: Israeli, Kazaki, Russian, French, Tajik, and even once Uigher..which is kinda hard to believe. I was only guessed american a few times, much less than other nationalities, but of course, if I opened my mouth it became obvious where I was from.

Ghat is a obscure english word that means the banks of a river.. it is only used in Indian and Pakistani english so you can see how this is confusing...

Awesome signs at Tian Chi: Protect the Environment and be civilized everyday

After Tian Chi I got dinner on the street again. There was so much good food: bread, chestnuts, and they had these really yummy looking omelet things where they guy put some greens in the bottom of what looked like a muffin tin and then poured egg over it to make an omelet - if I liked egg more I would have taken a gander at them. I also bought Pomegranate juice from one of the vendors: they have a press on their cart and squeeze it right before your eyes!!! It was so much better than that Pom bullshit you can get in the US which is mostly sugar with a little bit of food coloring - this was like biting into a pomegranate without having to worry about spitting out the pesky seeds.

After this I was still hungry and smelt chuar in the air, the most wonderful of aromas, but after I followed my nose and found the stand they only had what looked like meat. Not daunted, I went and bought some green beans at a super nearby, which I then tried to make the guy cook for me.. After he realized I was serious about not eating meat he thought the whole thing was a great joke and starting to tell everyone who passed on the street I was vegetarian. Turns out all of the Chuar was not meat, so he made me try two or three other kinds that were fake "meat" but tasted to me slightly dubious. After some oink oinking on my part and picture drawing to ask if it was pig he managed with he help of google translator and paper to draw a decent picture of corn. As I was about to leave the handle of my shitty 50 kuai bag broke and he tried to fix it for me, gashing his hand open in the process on one of the Chuar skewers, so then there was a mad dash for bandaids to mop it up before too much of his DNA went all over my bag. After all of these theatrics he only let me pay him one kuai for everything, including all the food I ate.

The guy who fed me and fixed my bag at great risk of life and limb

Day 3: 23 hour train ride or "meet and greet" to Kashgar

The train was pretty nice: four bunks per compartment, pretty clean, the bathroom was actually pretty awesome for being on a train. Not a single person spoke a word of english, but everyone wanted to talk to me anyway. Judging from their looks, I was some sort of alien which landed in their car on the train and they assumed that extraterrestrial life was smart enough to learn chinese through osmosis if they just kept talking to me long enough. A chinese guy with a really nice camera helped me do cool things on mine and showed me the best places to take pics from on the train. There was also an old Uigher dude who called me his MeiGuo Huar (american flower) the whole time and showed me pictures of his family which he carried around with him in a tattered photo album.