Most people pass through Urumqi (pronounced wOO-loo-moo-chee), the capital of Xinjiang, as quickly as possible. I suspect this is because most guide books describe it as an awful place with nothing to see. Although it isn’t teeming with tourist sites, besides it’s excellent museum, the town is an interesting mix of Chinese and Uigur personalities…
I wrote a wonderfully long post about The Gobi (finally!) but somehow forgot to put it on my thumb drive to upload today. In any case I can give you backdated entried about Naadam here and Lanzhou here. You’ll find some more photos from Urumqi in the gallery and a few more food and design…
Can you believe I’m updating again? I’m sure you’re starting to get sick of me. But you’ll all be complaining again once I’m in Central Asia on a mountain somewhere staying in a ger with no electricity. I’ve updated the gallery. Now, NW China is up to Urumqi! The Urumqi, Food and Design galleries will…
Yesterday I woke up in my clean hotel room, ate some cereal and prepared to go to the Kyrgyz Consulate. I had looked up vague directions on Lonely Planet’s Thorntree message board and went down to the front desk. I asked where the street was, they didn’t know. I asked where the big hotel nearby…
I spent two nights in Turpan, one day three of us hired a taxi from 7am until 7pm to take us around all of the sites. The highest my thermometer read was 104 and my French taxi partner was very disapointed. He thought it would be a lot hotter. My eyes began to water and…
Last night I took a 10:30pm night sleeper train from Dunhuang (actually a station 2 hours from Dunhuang) to Turpan (actually a station 1 hour from Turpan) and arrived in town this morning around 9am. I’ve been traveling with a girl from Taiwan and a guy from Paris for the past few days. There’s only…
I’ve added two new galleries of photos: Erlianhot and Hohhot here. In an attempt to be less confusing I named this gallery “NW China” to keep it seperate from “China” which was the gallery from my trip to China in 2004. If you haven’t looked at that I suggest spending some time as it covers…
Lanzhou is one of those towns that everyone ends up passing through on their to and from the West of China. During Phase 1 I arrived in Lanzhou one morning on a night train from Xi’an. I walked out of the station and into a cab to the bus station on my way to Xiahe,…
After a brief stop in Jiayuguan I’ve made it to Dunhaung! It’s been a long journey to get from Mongolia to the Xinjiang Province incluing 3 trains and 2 buses. After two good nights of sleep (on a bed!) I’m feeling a bit better. Dunhuang is also a very laid back place which has also…
I wrote a very long and insightful post about my ride from Hohhot to Yinchuan to Lanzhou but then the computer jerks here shut down my computer. They work on a pre-payment system but I have no idea what messages popping up on my screen in Chinese are so I lost it all. I did…
I thought I was prepared for China, I’ve been here before. But I don’t think you can ever really be prepared for China outside of the big East coast cities. I arrived in Hohhot (the capital of Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region) around 10:30pm on the 15th. The train was a few hours late and most…