Far Western China adventures...part 1.

Whenever we go to China our DIL (daughter-in-law) organises a trip to see places other than Shanghai. This trip we were venturing to the far west ,to the Xinjiang Province, and the hub of the Old Silk Road.

We flew to Kashgar via Urumqi (pronounced in either of two ways..."you-room-chi" or "wool-a-mooch-ee")
I am not sure of the reasons for the alternative pronunciations, but at a guess one is probably the Chinese pronunciation, and the other is in the local language of Turkic.

We flew over deserts of sand and stones, and magnificent mountains. 
These photos were taken from the plane.
Isn't the landscape stunning?

The season, when we flew over here, was early Autumn.
The mountains are very high, and snow-covered all year round, but you can see the dry zones of the desert at lower levels.
I am not sure of the name of these mountains, but the Kunlun Range forms the Eastern Border of Kashgar.

We had a short stop-over at Urumqi, which is the town/city in the whole world which is the furthest you can get from any sea. In this case it is 2250 km from the nearest sea.
(I thought that you would enjoy that piece of trivia!)
Then we were back on the plane for the flight to Kashgar. 

We were met at the Kashgar airport by a driver and a guide for our adventure into the West.
Although the members of our China-based family are learning, and speaking, Mandarin, it is not spoken in the western parts of Xinjiang Province.
The Uighur(or can be written as Uygur  and pronounced as wee-gar) people of this area are primarily Muslim, and do not speak Chinese.
So you can see that it was essential to have a guide/interpreter.( And the Chinese Government demands it)
His name was Wahid, and he was excellent.
He was a Uighur.
He spoke Tajik and English.

From the airport we set off on a 4hour, 200 km trip to Lake Karukul  along the Karakorum Highway.
The guide books tell us that this highway is the the highest paved highway in the world.
That's interesting because on our trip there was some good road, and  a lot of unsealed, very winding road, and other sections where only one lane was trafficable.  I think that much of the "paving" has been lost somewhere.
And we were climbing all the time.
Late in the afternoon we finally made it to the to Lake.

This is Lake Karakul, surrounded by mountains which are snow-covered all year.
It is a beautiful sight.  My photo does not do it justice.


It is at 3600m, and its colours are magnificent, ranging from dark greens to light blues. It is truly beautiful, and well worth the trip.

And here are the yurts, by the shore of the Lake.   We are spending a night in one of the yurts,
The people who live in the yurts are Kirgiz.
There are two small Kirgiz settlements on the Lake.


And wandering around the Lake are lots of Bactrian camels.
They seem rather docile.
And we were surprised to see that their humps are soft, and rather floppy.
I don't know why, but we had assumed that the humps were very firm structures.

Three camels with more yurts in the background.

I shall write about our yurt experience in the next Blog.
This one is long enough as it is, and I don't want to bore you!
And with all my pronunciation add-ons, this Blog is beginning to sound rather like a lesson in a classroom instead of an interesting read! Sorry!