Day 441 - Mountainous Medeu

Bright and early this morning we made our way to catch the public bus to Medeu. In winter Medeu is a skiing/ice-skating/snowboarding paradise, and in summer it provides some great hiking. We decided to only undertake a day trip, as we hope to do some bigger hikes in a National Park next week sometime, and relied on the very small map in the LP. We had an uphill start in the completely wrong direction, but after asking for directions we were soon on our way - well in the way that we thought we should be going. We made our way up the Malaya Almatinka Valley where after an hour or so we met up with some other hikers. It was here we were informed that we were not on our way to the 2060m Kimissarov Pass like we though, but rather going up a valley to one side of it. Not to worry though as one of the other hikers spoke English and it we had found ourselves a free guide for the day.
Victor is a naturalist by hobby and was spending the day collecting wild herbs, fruit, and mushrooms - so we joined in the hunt and got some education in return. Victor was also great at pointing out where we were hiking and at what huge mountains we were staring at - our favourites were the aptly named Mt Panorama, Mt Hunchback, and Mt Furry.
After a few hours of hiking uphill and the frequent stops for mushroom and raspberry picking - we managed to gobble at least a punnet or so of raspberries fresh from the wild - we made it to 2600m where we had a deserved rest and fresh bread, tomato, cheese and cucumber for lunch. Adam made a run for a vantage point to look over the almost 2900m Butakovka Pass, where he was rewarded with snowy peaks biting at the sky above - Victor would later tell us that the highest mountain in this range is over 5000m. From our lunch spot we could also look over the sprawling Almaty city in the valley below - but being already after 2pm it was time to start making our way down. We followed a ridge line that descended steeply into a forest where we lucked upon pear and apple trees to climb and enjoy.Victor took us to a fresh water spring where we saved ourselves a few dollars by filling our bottles with the ice cold snow-fed water. While here a local herd of horses came along for their daily drink. On our way back to the bus stop Victor pointed out the path we should have taken this morning, and soon we were on the bus back to Almaty. We stopped in at the supermarket for some refreshments, popped in for yet another doner from across the road, and flopped our weary bodies into bed.

Adlibing it high over Almaty.

Day 440 - Getting lost in the Almaty suburbs

This morning we made our way to the Kyrgyz Consulate by our first Kazakh public bus - the difference from China is that you're not jammed in like sardines, and you usually get a seat!! At the Consulate we were surprised with the lack of any line, but were immediately told we had to go to a bank a kilometre or so away to pay for our visa!! An hour later we returned to the consulate and handed our passports over, which we'll get back on Tuesday hopefully with a Kyrgyz visa in it.

From here we headed down to the Kok Tobe cable car, unfortunately the ticket price had gone up from about $4 to $10, and on our already stretched budget we decided we'd just walk up. So we followed Adam's nose and went zig-zagging through the back suburbs of Almaty, eventually finding ourselves in a tight overgrown path leading to, well, nowhere. Along the way we did we great views of the mountains surrounding Almaty, as well as making it about half way up the hill, but we were unable to find the path leading to the top.

With tummies rumbling we sat down outside the Palace of the Republic with a statue of the famous writer Kunanbaev looking down upon us while we searched through the guide for somewhere close by to eat. In the end we bused back to our hotel and got another yummy doner kebab from our (now) friends across the road!!

After relaxing the afternoon away we went to Panfilov Park where we saw the amazing Zenkov Cathedral designed in 1904. While Liv read her book Adam people-watched - mainly enjoying people of all ages skate-boarding, rollerblading, and biking around.

Also in the park is a war memorial with an eternal flame commemorating soldiers from the civil war and World War II.

Adlibing dodgy back roads.

Day 439 - A successful registration

We woke up today, watched Docherty take bronze in the triathlon, and then headed across the road to be charged NZ$3 and hour for the internet - we think our blogs will be a bit shorter for a while, and the emails not so frequent!!

Afterwards we grabbed a doner kebab for lunch from across the road (Liv utilising her full Russian vocabulary to ask for one without meat) and made our way to the Migration Police Station. Since arriving here whenever we see a police officer we walk in the opposite direction (so some of our walks have been longer than needed), so it felt a bit foolish walking into the station - but it was a requirement for being in the country. Foreigners staying for longer than 5 days in the country must register and although lots of foreigners we met were registered immediately on arrival, we weren't!! Travel agencies can register for you but charge about US$50 each, so we thought we'd try doing it ourselves - which we successfully did, with no Russian, for the price of only around US$5 each!

We had to wait until 4pm to pick up our passports after registration, so we made use of this time to wander around town. First we headed to Respublika Alanghy, where there is a huge Monument to Independence of the Golden Man on top of a winged snow-leopard.From here we got amazing views of the snow-capped mountains just outside Almaty - making Adam long for snowboarding even more than he already does!

From here we went to one of the biggest bookstores to try and find a Central Asia Lonely Planet, which we didn't end up finding, before making our way to relax in one of the many many parks that are all over Almaty.

We picked up our newly registered passports with no problems and headed to St Nicholas' Cathedral. This Cathedral was built in 1909 and was used as a stable for the Bolshevik Calvary. Now it is in full use and as we arrived worshippers were also arriving for daily prayers. The atmosphere was different than many temples we've been to that are used to tourists, and we were thoroughly relaxed in its surroundings.

We wandered through a small market while making our way back to the hotel where we expected to meet Muhammad, but he didn't show so we headed off to dinner ourselves. Funnily enough the first restaurant we walked into turned out to be a Chinese restaurant!! At least Liv could read the menu!

Adlibing it with the police.

Day 438 - A rainy welcome in Almaty

While stopped at Almaty I train station for a 20 minute wait before leaving for Almaty II station in the city centre, Mohammad burst into our cabin saying "come with me, my father is here and will take you to a hotel". This was an offer we could hardly refuse as we had been worried about finding accommodation and now we had not only an interpreter but a car to drive us there too!

Mohammad's father Ali was a friendly guy who drove us around multiple hotels (calling his friends for help too) before we found a clean-ish, safe-ish, and cheap-ish one in the middle of town. This hotel is costing us over NZ$50, for which price in China we could be staying in luxury, but for Almaty it is cheap.

Once parted from our friends we fell asleep exhausted. We had planned to meet up with Muhammad at lunch time but he got delayed so we headed out in search of food and a money exchange office. We successfully got our first meal, managed to exchange our RMB, posted that damn letter (without any language skills, but much quicker and easier than any of our visits to China Post) and found a supermarket! During our wander we couldn't help but notice all the expensive designer stores around town (and genuine too, not genuine-fake like in China)!

When we arrived back at our hotel Mohammad was chilling out front, so we headed out in the rain (again), where we were shown around a huge mall and taken out for dinner and beer.

All in all, a very successful and enjoyable first day in a new country.

Adlibing Almaty.

Day 437 - Hello Kazakhstan

At about 10am we officially left China and entered no-man's land, until arriving at Kazakh Customs. Here soldiers and officials boarded the train and greeted us with enthusiasm. Luggage searches took place, and while we barely had to open our bags our Chinese room mate had all her bags thoroughly searched all the while the Kazakh soldier was making comments to us along the lines of "you'll like Kazakhstan better than China", "the people are nicer here", "our students are smarter here" etc. While we enjoyed the friendly welcome to the country, the bias towards western travellers was blatantly obvious, and our previously smiling Chinese room mate, slowly developed a sulk at the discrepancy in treatment.
Throughout the day we got great glimpses of the beautiful Kazakh countryside including a massive Turquoise lake with shadowy mountains in the distance.
At one station stop Adam was admiring the snacks on offer on the platform (huge smoked fish, bread and kebabs) and struck up a conversation with Mohammad a fellow traveller. Later on we chatted the evening away with our room mate and Mohammad, while enjoying our first Kazakh sunset and finally went to sleep with rising anticipation of arriving in Almaty in the morning.

Adlibing it into friendly Kazakhstan.

Day 436 - Goodbye China

Today was our last day in China, after arriving 14 months and one week ago. There was no real celebration / commiseration today, but it was a typical Chinese day! Hanging at the hostel we met a French traveller who joined us for lunch and a wander around town. We also popped into the post office where the recurring theme of the year and the Chinese post office bureaucracy continued - we were trying to send home our work permits which together are about 4mm thick, but because it was not just a letter inside the envelope we had to pay for parcel post! Stuff that, we thought, we'll just send them from Kazakhstan!

After managing somehow to kill time until midnight, we jumped on our last local bus in China and headed to the train station. On the bus we had another typical Chinese experience when the conductor went around the bus picking up all the rubbish an unceremoniously chucked it all out the window for someone else to deal with!

At the station we cleared through security and waited nervously to head to Kazakhstan.

Adlibing it away from China.

Day 435 - Hot, Turpan, Hot!

We rose bright and early this morning and made our way to the bus station where we were on the first bus out to Turpan. Turpan is famous for several things including it's grapes, but it is most famous for being the second lowest place on earth and therefore one of the hottest! Later on in the day we were to question why we decided to come to the hottest place in China in the middle of summer!!
When we arrived we bartered very hard for a taxi out to the Flaming Mountains, and we ended up paying 60 kuai for the 70km return trip and an hour at the mountains. We made a very lazy, slow walk out to the base of the mountains, and up them a short way before retreating back to the air-con car. The Uighur legend surrounding the mountains is that a hero killed a child-eating dragon, creating the red colour of the mountains and the flame-like patterns. Initially our driver took us to the proper ticket office, where rather stupid tourists paid to enter a gate, have some photos with captive camels and monkeys, and get the mountains in the background with modern statues. Instead we drove 100 metres where we got unobstructed views of the mountains, all to ourselves!

Back in town we struggled to find food, especially for Liv as there is an abundance of meat around here. Eventually we settled for snacks consisting of fresh bread, fruit, and samosas.

We were quoted prices of around 50 kuai to go to a village only 7kms away that seemed ridiculous, so we searched for other options. We ended up catching the 101 public bus from outside the bus station that took us west where we changed to a minivan. We thought the van was taking us all the way to the Jiaohe Ruins, but it dropped us 2km away - usually this would have been nothing, but it the 47 degree heat it was very hard work!!The ruins themselves date from over 1600 years ago, and is one of the world's largest and oldest desert cities, boasting a population of 6500 residents at one point - why anyone would settle here beats us! We spent a sweaty hour wandering around the ruins, which now are just a maze of crumbling mud/brick buildings, but the size of it all was impressive. On a cooler day we might have lingered for a bit longer, however we were well and truly ready to be taken out of the oven! We were happily surprised to see a 3-wheel tuk-tuk at the gate which we caught back to the bus, and then the bus to the bus station! All in all or return trip cost us 13 kuai!

By 6pm we were on the bus heading back to Urumqi with ice cold waters in hand - on the way back we caught glimpses of beautiful snow-capped mountains and wondered why we went into the furnace when we could have gone to snowy mountains!

In Urumqi we got dinner and pretty much crashed into bed!!

Adlibing 47 degrees.

Day 434 - Returning to our Xinjiang home

As the train rolled into Urumqi station 20 minutes late (after sitting just out of town for 20 minutes!) we were waiting anxiously by the exit to be one of the first travellers out. Usually we sit in our seats and laugh at the Chinese people so keen to get off the train that they line up for 10 minutes before the train gets in, but today we were first off! The reason we were in such a hurry was that we had to buy our Saturday tickets to Kazakhstan (now that it's a Thursday, this is permitted) - so we ran, drawing even more attention to ourselves, and made it just in time to stop the curtain closing at the ticket office. The guard at the hotel entrance wasn't even concerned when Adam dropped the bags at the entrance to run to the office window - lately we have had to open our bags everywhere we go, but today Adam didn't have time to stop while they search for something (we're not sure what, and we're not sure they even know what)!

Tickets in hand (whoop! whoop!), the butterflies increased upon the realisation that we are leaving China in 2 days time and going to a place where we can't speak the language, where everything is 5-times as expensive as China, the cops are corrupt, but at least we can write anything on the blog with out fear of being completely blocked and censored.

We made it back to the Maitian Hostel, whose welcoming sign inside proclaims it as 'your home in Xinjiang', and considering we'll stay here for over a week in total, it kinda does feel like that! We had left our huge packs here and only taken a day bag to Kashgar, so it was almost like walking into your bedroom and seeing all your things there.

We spent another hour of our lives at the always incredibly slowly-serviced China Post, but were lucky to get a friendly worker helping us out. Another box sent home, a little more room in our packs ...

After lunch / dinner of noodle and chuanr, we chilled out on the net, and hung at our hostel home doing what most of China is doing at the moment - watching the Olympics. We have been shocked at the behaviour of many Chinese spectators on the tv who are clearly boo-ing any non-Chinese athlete - it kind of surprised us that the usually welcoming and friendly Chinese could act in such a non-sportsman-like way.

Adlibing it at Maitian.

Day 433 - A 24-hour return

Once again there is not much to say about our day today - we stocked up on food and made our way by local bus to the train station, repeated the x-ray dramas with our knives, and settled in on our sleeper train feeling more at home back in hard sleepers! Once on the train we had the usual conversations with our fellow passengers about where we were from, what we were doing, yes Liv speaks Chinese, and no the other one doesn't ....

Adlibing the rails.

Day 432 - Hitting the markets

The famous "Sunday Markets" (open everyday though) in Kashgar is one of the reasons we came all the way out here, so first thing this morning the markets is where we went! When we arrived we weren't quite sure where to start because the market is SO HUGE!! There are walls and walls of carpets, scarves, material, dried fruit, musical instruments, hats, shoes, bags .... it goes on and on!We spent a greater part of 3 hours here, even haggling at full force (the only way to survive here, as they are master sellers - the result of generations of trading) for some of our own purchases. With many stalls selling the same things, the buyer definitely has the advantage as there's always someone who will sell it cheaper!

We to buy a congratulations pressie for EJ who has just got an A for one of her design projects at Uni - and boy she deserved it, the photos were amazing!! Since we were buying for EJ, it wasn't hard to buy a few things for ourselves too! Our favourite purchases were a guitar and a drum - we might even start busking to get some extra cash for on the road!!

Out on the streets we indulged in some yummy Uighur breads and unlike Chinese bread, they taste like they should - salty!

From here we headed to the Abakh Hoja Tomb - which is just stunning! The tomb was erected in 1640 in memory of one of Kashgar's most famous leaders, and it is one of the largest domed buildings in Xinjiang. The architecture is so different than Chinese style, it was fascinating for us - too hard to describe, so just enjoy the photo!

We caught bus number 20 back to the centre of town (passing the Sunday Market again) where we ran into 4 travellers looking for accommodation. Liv then played translator to get them a cheap room in our hotel!

One of the best things to do in Kashgar is to make yourselves one with the old part of town, so once again we made our way via the back roads until we were mashed between hundreds of friendly Uighurs going about their night market business. We followed a smile into a restaurant where we dined on Uighur noodle dishes, Adam getting quite the mixture of liver, kidneys and other 'things', and Liv's vege dish was a safe mixture of veges and eggs.

On the way back to the hotel we picked up some yummy (if very very tough) bagels for our long train journey tomorrow, and we spent the rest of the night watching more Olympics and chilling one of our last nights in China away. We also found out that there was another attack on security guards about 30km south of Kashgar, which accounts for the addtion of these spikes outside the government office that weren't there yesterday. Adlibing it with the adlibed tiles.

Day 431 - Milling around Old Kashgar

Our train pulled into Kashgar and we immediately set about buying return tickets for in a few days time - we didn't want to have to leave so soon but we have to get back to buy our train tickets to Kazakhstan. Plus we didn't want to have to have another luxury trip in first class, that we can't really afford by leaving the ticket-buying to the last minute.

Kashgar was a major centre for silk rood trading for thousands of years, as it was a strategic point between many Central Asian countries. Here the population is overwhelmingly Uighur, and our Chinese language skills are virtually useless - good practice for us, as we'll be spending the next few months in Central Asia with no language abilities at all!

Finding accommodation here was a complete mission - thanks to the ever so un-Western friendly Chinese government. The first 5 hotels we went to turned us away merely because we're foreigners and pointed us in the direction of a hotel double our price range! After an infuriating 2 hours wandering the streets, we gave in and had a delicious Uighur lunch!

Revived we finally stumbled upon a pearler of a hotel just within our budget - by far the fanciest hotel we've ever stayed at in Asia, it even has an elevator! It does happen to be just down the road from where the bomb attack took place just over a week ago ...

We spent the rest of the afternoon ambling around the back roads of the old town - though we passed on paying to enter enter the renovated "Old Town". We're not sure why you would pay when there's so much to see outside of the Chinese Tourist Trap. We got a true Uighur experience making our way between stalls of breads, fruit, knives, brass ware and more.

We watched the craftsmen making their goods by hand, just as their father and grandfathers would have done over the years. We have been searching for cotton sleeping bag liners for our travels through Central Asia and India as we've heard they can be pretty dirty places to sleep, but it's too hot for sleeping bags. The cheapest we could find was about $20 each, which is crazy for a square piece of material - so when we found ourselves in the middle of the material part of town we bought some cotton and found a dress-making shop to sew us up some bags! $5 later we had 2 perfect liners and had spent an enjoyable half hour watching beautiful Uighur women happily sewing together stunning traditional clothing.Oh, and we also got the fright of our lives when the mother's young daughter ran away with our bag and Adam's sunnies on her face. She promptly returned them for hundreds of photos while the rest of her family worked.
After exhausting ourselves with sights, sounds, smells, and smiles we made our way back to our hotel via more backroads, tended to the necessities of food, then enjoyed watching some Olympics on tv. However we are getting sick of hearing shouts of "piaoliang" (beautiful) and it would be nice to see some other countries competing.

Adlibing it with the Uighurs.

Day 430 - A day on the train

This morning we headed to the train station where our bags went through the security x-ray as usual, but due to the tightened security our eating knives were immediately picked up. We had completely forgot about them as we always travel with them - but luckily all they did was write down Adam's name and passport number. At least they'll know the name of any terrorists ...

On the Kashgar-bound train we shared our cabin with 2 Uighur men - 1 old grandpa whose Chinese was as basic as Liv's, and 1 a wealthy businessman. We managed to spend the day reading up on Kashgar and Kazakhstan, doing cross-stitch, enjoying novels, and of course lots of 2-minute noodle eating!

Adlibing it with knives.

Day 429 - Train issues

We made it to the train station (well actually the hotel next to the station where the Kazakhstan tickets are sold) only to be told that on Saturdays you can only buy tickets for the Monday train. As we want to leave on a Saturday we can only buy tickets on Wednesdays and Thursdays - what a pain in the arse, and stupid at the same time!

We ended up meeting and chatting to Jennel, a backpacker from Singapore, who entered Tibet with a fake Chinese ID and got caught, and is now on her way to Kazakhstan after her Chinese visa was cut very short! It was great hearing her funny stories and we may even catch up with her in the 'stans. We headed from here to the actual train station where out of necessity we were forced to buy soft sleeper tickets to get to Kashgar tomorrow - although it's an extra $25 each, Kashgar is a place we were both really looking forward to so we're not about to let a few bucks and a bomb get in the way!!

We wandered to lunch where we got strange looks from the owner when we told her we didn't eat meat in her Chicken restaurant. We left here and headed back to Fubar where we swapped one of our books and chatted again with Johnathon the kiwi, and took some photos of the awesome tea towels we saw last time.Afterwards we set off to the Uighur section of town where we adlibed our way around the back alleyways though some of the most exciting and bustling markets we've been to in China and particularly enjoyed the variety of people and things around for us to gaze at. Liv even purchased a head scarf to fit in when we visit some more of the Muslim dominated areas of our travels. Adam was fascinated watching a herb and medicine man smash up dried starfish and lizards and all sorts of plants, and ended up becoming the photographer for the local kids!! With the abundance of meat snacks around, Adam enjoyed some more Chuanr and some beef samosas, much like Mongolian horsrog - eat your heart out Franco!!

Back in China town we ate (Liv) and drank beer (Adam) and did some shopping for our 24 hour train trip to Kashgar tomorrow!

Adlibing the Uighur neighbourhood.

Day 428 - Visa success

First thing this morning we went to the Kazakhstan Consulate with our fingers crossed that when we arrived we'd be presented with visas. Unfortunately when we arrived at 10am we were told to come back at 12pm instead - so we had 2 hours to kill in the wop-wop suburbs of Urumqi. We did manage to print out our Kazakhstan guide, which we downloaded from the LP site - we were so stoked about this because you can't buy the books in China. We also finally managed to get on some computers at an internet cafe, something that's been getting more and more difficult due to an increase in security, meaning the staff at some cafes can't be bothered entering English into the computer and registering us like they're required to do by law. Luck was on our side and upon our return to the consulate (after once again being ushered to the front - a nice change from the constant pushing in front of us!) our visas were ready and waiting - Kazakhstan, here we come!!

From the consulate we went straight to the train station with the hope of buying tickets to Kazakhstan - oh no, closed, come back tomorrow please...

With the Olympic Opening Ceremony looming we hung around and did some planning at the hostel before watching the ceremony - for 4 whole hours!!!! It was awesome to hear the cheering and clapping from the Chinese people at our hostel as they are just so proud to be the host country. It was choice for us to see the New Zealand team entering the stadium and representing kiwis in a country that's been our home for the past 14 months. The Olympic hype over the past year or so has been totally crazy, with constant advertising, Olympic songs blaring from everywhere, and almost EVERY item with the official Olympic sponsor mark - so it was great when 8pm on the 8th of the 8th month in 2008 finally arrived!!

Adlibing the opening ceremony.

Day 427 - Exploring Urumqi and its Uighur population

Early this morning we headed out into the day following Xinjiang time, the unofficial time around here. It was 10am Beijing time, but more like 8am when you're this far west of Beijing, who for some reason choose to ignore such vast land differences and impose the same time on everyone. However we noticed that most people ignore the official time, expect the government run things like banks, and were heading out to work at 10am!

We found Adam some more sunglasses after his original fake Armani ones suffered a young death typical of many made in China products! We then accidentally adlibed our way to a Uighur market full of fruit, meat, and different local handicrafts - a nice change from the normal things at Chinese markets we have been looking at for the last 14 months. We then ended up in the very touristy and not so enjoyable huge "traditional" Erdaoqiao markets, which only held our attention for a few minutes before going to the supermarket and making our way back to the hostel.

After lazing the afternoon away we went to a huge cybermarket passing through the People's Park on the way where we saw a group of black army soldiers who looked like they were following us .... At the market we bought a couple of cheap batteries for our camera in preparation for a month in the mountains in Nepal in a few months time. Oh yeah, Nepal - only an 8 year absence!

We spent the evening back at the hostel hanging out with other travellers and the awesome staff members.

Adlibing the shops of Urumqi

Day 426 - The finale province of the China Mission

We woke up with only 3 more hours until our train arrived in Urumqi, the capital city of Xinjiang province - where the majority of the Uighur nationality live. The views from the train of the surrounding mountains were awesome - they kind of reminded us of home! As soon as we arrived we directly headed to the Kazakhstan Consulate where we applied for our visas - when we arrived it was a nice surprise to be ushered past the whole line of waiting Chinese and inside!! We filled out the usual forms, and just have to wait a couple of days to see if we're allowed into their country or not - at the moment we're not even considering what will happen if we don't get visas!!

Afterwards we were once again treated to the complete and utter friendliness of the Chinese people when we had multiple people trying to help us find a bus to a hostel. The first lady we asked accompanied us 10 minutes down the road to where she thought the bus was, and then halfway back, when more people tried their best to help us. We eventually got on a bus accompanied by a teenage guy who told us when to get off.

One strange thing that happened on the bus (and had actually happened on the train too) was that the conductor asked to search our bags - we didn't find out until later that this was not only due to heightened security for the Olympics, but also because of the bomb attack in Kashgar (also in Xinjiang Province).

We ended off getting off the bus at the completely wrong end of the street, and walking around for over an hour to find the Maitian Youth Hostel - but we're glad we persevered as the hostel is great, with super helpful and friendly staff.

We set off in search of cheap food, and then went for a huge mission to try and find a lonely planet guide for Central Asia, and although we found Chinese versions, there were no English copies anywhere! With this failed mission, we headed to the only foreign owned bar in Urumqi with the hope of getting some info there. After a nice stroll through the People's Park, we eventually found Fubar, and spoke to the Kiwi owner, Johnathon, who is from Wellington!! It was cool checking out the kiwi paraphernalia on the walls including cool retro tea-towels sporting the All Blacks doing the haka along with the classic cartoon kiwi!

Back at the hostel we chatted to our Hong Kong room mates for a few hours, and Adam popped out for some chuanr and beer - being that this province is THE province for chunar (bbq) and it is a favourite of Adam's - especially with a bing de pijiu, which he can order all by himself!!

Adlibing it one step closer to freedom!

Day 425 - Headed to Xinjiang

Today we chilled out in Dunhuang city, which as we said a few days ago has very little to offer, but the day was exciting for us as it would be the day we head to Xinjiang. Xinjiang is the last province we have left to see in our monumental China challenge of adlibing our way through all of the country's provinces. All together there are 33 province-level administrative units in China, (including 4 municipalities, 22 Provinces, 5 autonomous regions, 2 special districts), and after Xinjiang we will have been to 32 of them - and we've told you many times which is the one left we can't quite get to right now!!

The only thing we really did today, other than the necessity of eating and drinking, was sit in a shady park and read our books - oh, and Adam also go to check out yet some more exercise equipment he hadn't seen before.

The day came to a close sitting in an abnormally clean and organised Chinese train station (it's like this now because it's new - give it a few years!!!), before boarding our train to Urumqi. The clean and organised trend continued on the train, where we got a whole 6-person berth to ourselves as the train was weirdly empty.

Adlibing our way to number 33.

Day 424 - Caved in

This morning we made our way by public bus (8RMB) out to the Mogao Ku (Mogao Grottoes), which Dunhuang is famous for. Here we forked out a fortune for ticket prices and an obligatory guide (who turned out to be worth the money without a doubt), and were lucky enough to be in a group of only 6 others - in contrast to the Chinese groups with 20-30 people. Tourists can't take cameras in, and access to the amazing caves are restricted - out of the 735 caves we were able to go into less than 10. Our guide took us to a good variety of caves, and the tour took 2 hours - though at the end we could have happily wandered through many more.

The first cave we went into housed the Big Buddha - which at 34.5m high is one of the largest in the world - housed in this 9 story pagoda-like structure: All the caves we went into were from different periods of time between the 4th and 13th Centuries, and were funded by individuals including merchants of the Silk Road, monks, and officials. Most caves had Buddhist frescoes on the walls, some of which had been scratched off, re-clayed and then new pictures repainted by people who wanted to contribute to the caves, but lacked space to do so! Lots of the caves also had real gold used in the artwork - one cave that stood out had a thousand painted Buddhas, but only one with a gold face.

Another cave that caught our attention was one with significant Indian influence, where we followed an old Buddhist story that lined the walls about how the Buddha (in a previous life) sacrificed his body for starving tigers.

The final cave we saw was the Library Cave where in 1900 a secret cave was discovered that had thousands of manuscripts hidden away (including the world's oldest book, medical prescriptions, music, and military reports). In 1907 European adventurers managed to pay a very little price for a lot of these manuscripts (a fact repeated to us many times, as if to make us feel guilty, by our guide), and these days are found in many museums around the world.

Afterwards we went to the museum where several caves we didn't see are reproduced - it was amazing to see how realistic and old they managed to make them. As we couldn't take photos in the real caves, these are a couple from inside the pretend ones:

After hiding our from the near 40 degrees heat till about 5pm (though it was still in the 30's when we ventured out) we eventually headed to Mingsha Shan (Singing Sands Mountain), which is a huge stretch of mammoth sand dunes.When we arrived there we found an entrance fee so exorbitant we refused to pay out of principle (and partly out of stingy-ness), so set off on a walk to get around the fence. A couple of kms later the fence came to the end and we had unlimited access to the mighty dunes - and all to ourselves too, away from the carnival crowd by the ticket office.We even managed to get a view of the Yueyaquan (Cresent Moon Lake), that appears out of nowhere in the middle of the dunes - a true Silk Road oasis.Liv managed to get to the top of one dune, but gave up when Adam wanted to go further - so Adam set off to explore on his own!! Up the very top Adam had a Chinglish conversation with some students who thought we were extremely clever to find where the fence ended - and who were also happily amazed to hear that we'd never pay to see sand dunes in good ol' NZ!

On the way home we passed camels being led by motorbike / bicylce back to their homes, and sneakily picked ourselves a fresh pear! All in all the dunes turned out to be a worthwhile and cheaply adlibed adventure.

Adlibing it to the end of the fence.

Day 423 - Desert deja vu

We woke up in the middle of the Gobi and immediately looked out for a well to freshen up. Then we realised we weren't in the Yak smasher bumping along Mongolian "roads", but on a train in China heading to Dunhuang.

When we arrived we got our onwards tickets for a few days time to Urumqi, which will put us in Xinjiang province - the last out of 32 that we'll make it to - only missing number 33 Tibet on the way. Fingers crossed that we'll make it into Tibet from Nepal in about 3 months time ...

We found a hotel where we bargained down from 160 to 70 kuai in a matter of seconds, so travellers note that you have the upper hand when bargaining. Dunhuang town itself isn't really much and we filled in the day ambling through small markets, enjoying great food, and wandering along the river.
With nothing much left to do we said to each other "there must be a park where we can relax and read", and sure enough we read the bus timetable with a stop named simply"park"- perfect. So we spent the afternoon sheltered from the stifling heat under a pagoda, beside a poo / green lake (beggars can't be choosers...), reading our books.
We finally managed to make a phone call home to Adam's family, where it was so great to hear mum's voice and get to wish Dad a happy birthday.

In the evening after dinner, we made our way to the night markets where we checked out some local goods, and even bought ourselves a piece of artwork to remember the Gobi by.

Adlibing the park.

Day 422 - Nothing but travelling

Our first mode of transport for today was our feet, which deposited us at the bus station and 10 minutes later we were rolling our way towards Xining the capital of Qinghai. Along the way we soaked up as much of the beautiful Qinghai scenery we could, though our attention was often diverted to the 100s of rockslides caused by digging roads into crumbling cliffs!

In Xining we waited an hour for our next bus back to Lanzhou, on our arrival we were super stoked to get sleeper tickets heading to Dunhuang for tonight. This would be our first proper stop for sightseeing in Gansu, after the access problems we had last week!

We had just enough time to munch down a feed and grab some fresh fruit for the trip, before boarding and setting in for the night.

As we made our way from A to D we didn't have time to make a call home to wish Dad Denton a happy (OLD) birthday, so here it is coming at you from the Adlibing Blog: HAPPY BIRTHDAY!

Adlibing it from A to B to C to D.

BULLETIN: Mongolia Photos

Under the Photos link is Sylvie's photos from Mongolia, which we think are super!!! Check them out.

Thanks Sylvie!!

Day 421 - Getting to know the temples of Repkong

We slept in today for the first time in a looooonng time, and boy it was nice! After finally getting up and ready, we found a minivan heading to Wutun Si (temple), which for once was cheaper than the guide said - love it when that happens, as the price has usually doubled and then some! At the temple we were shown around by a couple of Tibetan monks, who unlocked several chapels for us so we could have a look. They were all amazing, some were really new while others had hundreds of years to their names. We love how in Buddhism colour is used like an overflowing rainbow - it makes the experience so bright and welcoming. This temple is really famous for its Thangkas (Buddhist paintings) and we were given the chance to look in at the workshop and see some works in progress. After our personal tour, we asked to look around by ourselves, and once again had the freedom to find our own way through the maze of monks' residences and temples, finding welcoming, smiling monks going about their daily religious life around every corner. On our way out we wandered past the 8 stupas that each signify something different - from miracles to enlightenment. We made our way across the valley from one mountainside temple to another - Gomar Gompa. Here yet another friendly monk (though we're not sure you can find many that aren't friendly) took us up the enormous Chorten where we were blown away by the fact we could scale this gorgeous structure.At the top we got great views across the valley to Wutun Si, and the surrounding villages. Our monk made his chants as he cleaned the shrine that occupies the summit of the chorten. We lingered here for some time, not really wanting to make our way down, happily absorbed in the colours painted on every level, that we got to see up close. Where's Wally Denton in this photo?Afterwards Adam was allowed to have a look at the 400 year old temple and monks quarters that once again mazed their way around. Inside Adam stopped to listen to some chanting before making his way back. In the meantime Liv waited outside chatting with a local Tibetan woman who had come to give some food to the monks - she was really happy to be given the temple entrance ticket, which she indicated she would hang on her wall. Liv was even invited to her home for lunch, but didn't want to leave as she knew Adam would be worried if she wasn't there when he got back!

We decided to walk the 6-7km back to town, even though the minivan back would only cost 60 cents for the both of us! On the way we stopped by the river for a snack, and after an hour or so found ourselves once again on the main streets of town.

After a rest and read in the hotel, we came outside to find the same army men from yesterday standing in formation at the door - maybe they're just keeping an eye on us! After our initial shock of seeing them there subsided we even managed a quick hello in response to their surprised smiles.

In the evening we wandered through the bustling fruit, vege and trinket markets and found dinner closeby.

Adlibing the temples outside Tongren.