Day 36 Urumqi to Turpan

Day 36  Urumqi to Turpan

We started out the day with a big breakfast at the hotel.  Got the buses loaded and drove for 3+ hours to Turpan.  Because this is the National Holiday in China and EVERYONE has the week off, the traffic was insane.  We saw two places where there were several cars involved in accidents.  Most of them just fender benders, but still slowed us way down from getting to where we were going.  The bus was having problems with the air conditioning so it got a little warm at times and we had to delay our afternoon activities for an hour or so. 

We checked in at our hotel and then went to lunch at the Muslim restaurant that is connected with the hotel.  It was a big lunch with some really spicy foods again.  This area is known for its love of spicy foods.  I had to be really careful with what I ate.  After an hours rest, we got back on the bus and drove to the Flaming Mountains area.  We walked around and saw a village of the Urgur people.  They live very simply and in conditions that they have probably lived in for centuries, except now they have cars and motors to replace the horses, donkeys and cows.  We bought some freshly dried raisins there.  Yum!

This area is very windy.   There are windmills clear up to the mountains in the background.  What you see in the air is dust.

Here they are building a new high speed train that should be done next year.  It can take people from Urumqi to Beijing in about 11 hours they said.

This is a graveyard of the Ugyur people.  They build little tombs for their loved ones.

Some are the are on the way to Turpan.  Nothing grows here it seems.

More landscape.  This is called the moving mountain because the shifting sands on it keep changing it.

We loaded back on the bus and went to the Pachikli Grottos,  a ruin of Buddhist monks, that they are in the process of restoring the frescos and such.  The Muslims took out all the statues when they first got there because they believe that a statue of a person is an idol of worship.  We then went to Gaoching, another ruin and we had a donkey cart ride to the actual ruin that was about a mile down a very dusty, dry dirt road.  Our donkey was tired and didn’t want to work anymore, so all the other carts that were behind us got to pass us. 

The mosque of the Urgur village.

Village street.

This is an oven where they back their special bread.

The door to this Muslim home, announces that they have daughters here.  This is how the family get to know if they are compatible with other families.  If they have flowers painted on the door, they have daughters in the home.  If there are building on the door, there are sons in the home.  So if you have both daughters and sons, you will paint both on the door.  

A home of the Urgurs.

Because they live so far away from Mecca, if they can't make the trip to Mecca when it is time, they can climb this mountain instead.  Yes, those are steps all the way to the top!  When you come down, you take the zigzag steps down.  

After that ruin, we went back to the hotel, but before we actually got in the hotel, we went with the Murdock’s and the Shauerhamers and got some dinner at one of the local Chinese Restaurants.  They saw us walking down the pathway and invited us in with their “English” menu.  We were just going to go to the store and grab something quick, but did this instead.  It was good.

At a table next to us, I noticed three young men, 11 years old, looking our way and talking and it seemed like they were trying to get up the courage to come over and talk to us.  It was like, “I’ll go if you will.”  “Come on, don’t be chicken!”  Finally, I told the others at our table about them, so we looked their way and smiled and said “hello” in Chinese.  That brought them over and they got to speak in English to us.  We asked their names and how old they were.  The parents that were with them, loved that we were talking to them.  They start learning in English in elementary school here and to have a chance to actually use it was a special experience for them.  They don’t get a lot of Anglo visitors in the area because of the possible threats of violence, so we were quite an item to have 53 of us walking around their town.  

On our way back to the hotel, there were two little girls ahead of us and they kept running past us and then looking back for a little bit.  Finally we said, “Hi” and they said “Hello” back to us.  They were so cute. We found the people Turpan very willing to use what English they used for us.  Long tiring day though!

This is the lobby of our hotel in  Turpan.  We could get wifi if we wanted to sit in the lobby as the men smoked...