June 30 - July 2 - Turpan, Xinjiang

From Dunhuang I had a rough night's rest on a sleeper bus headed into Xinjiang province and the city of Turpan.  Turpan was the first place where I encountered what would become a major problem for me - the inability of foreigners to stay anywhere other than a very few, usually expensive 'foreigner's hotels'.  I found a hotel with pretty crappy dorms (that seemed to have been cleaned perhaps 10 years before, certainly not more recently) and reluctantly agreed to pay 50 yuan for a bed (the most I had paid in 2 months in China, and I'd stayed at far nicer places for far less).  The only consolation was the room had a good shower (albeit not very clean).  I explored Turpan with the Kiwi family I'd met in Dunhuang.  We managed to arrange a driver with a crappy little copy-Suzuki van to take us to the Jiahe Ancient City one evening, and to the Uighur village of Tuyok, the flaming mountains and the karez (irrigation) sites the next day.  The beautiful location of Jiaohe on a small plateau between 2 rivers and the preservation of and almost unrestricted access to some of the ancient ruins was cool, but there's not really all that much to actually see.  If they had had some sketches of what some of the buildings might have looked like a couple of thousand years ago, or more detail about the structures, building techniques etc that would have been cool, but typical of so many historical sites in China, useful information was thin on the ground.  The village of Tuyok was an interesting little place but it's a bit too touristy - it kind of seems semi-deserted with only young and old people left, and of course the ticket sellers at the entrance gate, but it isn't very vibrant anymore.  Anyway the location is very spectacular with the backdrop of these incredibly rugged, barren rocky mountains and in stark contrast to their little irrigated valley full of grapes and melons and such.  The flaming mountains weren't lit on the day we went to see them - there we too much haze so the light was flat.  The karez irrigation channels that the driver took us to see weren't much to look at but at interesting for their historical significance - without the use of these covered irrigation channels the agricultural basis for people living in this part of Xinjiang from ancient times until now would not have been possible.  This being Xinjiang, the land of naan bread and BBQ lamb skewers began my time here by eating this diet for the couple of days I was in Turpan.

Jiaohe

Tuyok village

Cooking samsa (ground lamb, onions and spices in a kind of pastry shell, like a little pie) in a tandoor on the side of the street -

BBQ lamb and beer