A year away: August 2010

July 17-19 - Pingyao, Shanxi, China

The train ride from Huashan was absolute madness and overcrowded beyond belief. I literally had to jump off the (slowly) moving train because the car conductor forgot to open the door at the normal time to let me off. The small town of Pingyao was once one of the major centres of banking in China in the late 19th century. It is still quite a quaint if somewhat over-touristed little place with a complete wall surrounding most of the town and a lot of interesting old buildings. Unfortunately Shanxi province is the heart of China's coal production belt and the air is always heavy with the smell of sulphrous coal smoke. Regardless Pingyao was a good place to relax for a couple of days and I found a very comfortable and quiet hostel to stay at.

July 15 and 16 - Huashan, Shanxi, China

From Xi'an I took on Huashan at night and in the constant drizzle. The trip rounded out my poor run of luck with Chinese tourist mountains but I did manage to sneak a few peaks of the view as clouds moved momentarily - as with Huangshan I think it would have been amazing in clear weather. The path up the mountain is certainly precipitous in places but it has been made a whole lot less challenging than the original stone-ladder-type-path up some very sketchy slopes by the building out of more gradual flights of steps. Check out some of the pics below.

July 13-15 - Urumqi and Xi'an

From Kashgar I took the easy option and instead of 3 days on a bus or 2 on a train I flew out to Urumqi, spent one night there and checked out the Xinjiang Museum with it's famous desert mummies and the next day flew again onward to the central Chinese city of Xi'an. The Seven Sages Hostel in Xian was one of the cooler hostels I've stayed at. Housed in a hundred year old courtyard house the hostel has a certain ambience all it's own. I didn't find too much to see in Xi'an itself apart from some small back streets replete with little shops and old men and their caged crickets, and the intact city wall surrounding the inner part of the city - it's very unusual for larger Chinese cities to have in intact wall. Early the second morning I was there I scaled a small section of the wall and climbed the steps to the top, walked along for a few hundred meters and climbed down a different way. It was nice to be up there alone but the haze and smog didn't make for the best views... The main drawcard in the Xi'an area are the Terracotta warriors, located about an hour outside the city. I took the bus out there in the rain and enjoyed a rain-soaked terracotta warrior-fest. Actually the setup was very professional and the warriors are quite an impressive sight. The first pit is the oldest and largest and only a small part has been excavated. You cannot get too close to the men themselves in this hall, but you do get some feel for the scale of the collection - it is huge, there a many thousands of figures. Pit 2 is deeper and smaller but since it's newer it has a bit more of a hands-on feeling with better lighting and more supplemental information. Pit 3 is the newest and is also quite large. Not much has been excavated here but there is a kind of museum around and above the pit itself with certain important warrior figures in glass cases so you can see them up close. At close range you can really see the detail work that was put into each of the thousands of warriors crafted and begin to imagine what a massive project it must have been. They have now mostly lost their lifelike painted colour but they must have been a truly awesome sight when there were newly completed and bright with colour. The on-site museum also housed some interesting exhibits including a pair of bronze chariots cast in exquisite detail. From Xi'an the next stop was to be Huashan.

The city wall is still in use today

Caged crickets on a back street

July 9-13 - Kashgar, Xinjiang, China

Kashgar is perhaps the least Chinese place in all of China. It is at times chaotic, it's hot as hell in the summer, dry, dusty and like so many cities in China seems to be stuck in a constant phase of rebuilding and renewing. There is much more lamb on the menu than pork and you have to seek out Chinese food rather than being bathed in it. The old town ares for which Kashgar is famed are rapidly being razed in the name of progress. Old arts like copper smithing and tin smithing are still practiced in the streets naan bread, lamb kebab and sliced melon of all descriptions are on sale at every turn. I spent 4 days in Kashgar, one of them a rest an recovery day during which I slept most of the time. On the first evening I wandered a little around the area near the hostel and spent some time watching a coppersmith working some scrap copper into a big pot - pretty amazing craft. The first full day I checked out some of the remaining sections of old town and took lots of photos of the curious kids that live there. On the second day (Sunday) I went to find the famous livestock market with a cool German girl from the hostel and visited some other parts of the old town with her later in the day. On the third day I slept and on the fourth I flew to Urumqi. Below are some photos of some of the highlights of Kashgar.

The destruction of the old parts of town is pretty serious in places

Old makes way for new - the edge of a new park beside the old town

Xinjiang food - some kind of sausage made out of animal parts, I think

Figs, berries, melons all abound here

This guy was having a good day

Judging by the number of skins, these 2 had an even better day!

Dried snakes, yummy.

The famous livestock market. I could have bought a cow and calf for about $1000 but it was a little to big to fit in my backpack

Kids and people of Kashgar. I think the last guy had a pretty crappy job - searing sheeps legs.

The art of coppersmithing and hand tin-plating is alive and well in Xinjiang using recycled copper roofing sheet for the most part as the raw material.

The rougher side of Kashgar - a sandstorm envelops the city

July 7-9 - Lake Karakul, Xinjiang

Karakul lake is set at 3600m in the high mountains on the road to Pakistan and in the shadow of the mighty 7500+m Muztagh Ata. The scenery on the way up and all around the lake is amazing. I stayed in a yurt with a local Kyrgyz family one night and camped by the lake the second. I did a massive solo 30km day hike from the lake to a glacier at about 4300m across some crazy-rough terrain that took all day and a lot of effort. This is definitely the least populated and off-the-beaten-track part of China that I have visited and it is awesome.