Northern Xinjiang

Since the last update, I've been running around North Xinjiang taking in the views, gobbling down kebabs. The ones on skewers, not the Doner variety in pita bread. Kebabs here are much more preferable to the ones in NZ due to the absence of vegetables and bread. The usual companion to 20 skewers of kebabs is either fermented horse milk (not as bad as it sounds, it tastes just like really really really sour runny yoghurt :D), or kwass - a central asian / russian brew of hops and honey, its actually really nice despite the fact that when you think about it, kwass ends up being sweet beer...

Anyway the altitude in northern Xinjiang is about 2000m above sea level, so most of the scenery here is either grass or really tall pines and pine related trees. The first couple of days involved trekking around this nice alpine lake near the China/Kazahkistan/Russian border, the views are simply amazing to the average Chinese tourist since they've never seen such clear water, blue skies, so much grass and trees. Due to the lack of photographic evidence at this stage, I can only say that the place looks kinda like fiordland, swap native bush for pines and firs, swap the fiords for a lake and thats what you get in north Xinjiang.

Accomodation is abysmal though... no showers(i wasn't brave enough to skinny dip in the lake), small log cabins, and an outhouse (squat style!) to do your business.

On the subject of squatting, I think I now have stronger thigh muscles from increased amounts of squatting in the last couple of weeks.

Then it was onto eastern Xinjiang, firstly to the multicultural city of Yining (or Ghulja) with a similar mix of ethnic Han Chinese, Kazakhs, Mongols, and Turks. You have to be slightly careful being Han Chinese here, about 8 odd years back some suicidal Turks blew up some buses and killed some Han Chinese here, my heavy-handed government came in and made things slightly better, there didn't seem to be any visible tension between the ethnicties from what I saw though. Anyway, activities around Yining invovled a horse trek around a large grassy plain ending up with a visit to a Kazakh family's yurt, sampling fermented horse milk, and exciting the locals with my digital camera.

Next stop, southern Xinjiang, to Kashgar and from there to lake Karakul on the Chinese-Pakistani border. Hopefully I won't get altitdue sickness, lake Karakul is supposedly 4000 odd metres above sea level.