The Tian Shan mountain range extends across Xinjiang from west
to east. Some of the peaks are over 5000m high and snowcapped, even in summer.
It's here, up in the forests and grasslands, that nomadic Kazakhs set up their
idyllic summer homes in felt skinned yurts...
We reached Shuixigou, only an hour's local bus ride from Urumqi, and headed up
into the mountains for an hour or two on an increasingly narrow path. The cool
mountain air up here at over 2000m was a relief from the heat of Urumqi (and a
very pleasant contrast to the furnace of Turpan!). We had teamed up with an
Uighur student, Ahmatjan, a friend we had first met in Altay. Now he was staying
in Urumqi, though later he was to return to his home outside Kashgar.
Just before dark we stumbled upon a small yurt encampment. Ahmat helped
us negotiate a price for staying the night in the Kazakh couple's spare yurt
(the Uighur and Kazakh languages are very similar). A meal of polo rice
with mutton, stale bread, and lots of thirst-quenching tea was prepared and we
went to bed on the hard, carpet-covered platform exhausted but happy!
L: Here's the yurt, with the cooking shelter next door; R: Ahmatjan striking a
debonair pose
The yurt itself wasn't felt-skinned, but was lined with with rugs on the inside
(left), and white canvas on the outside. Here's Lesley (right) psyching up to go
in search of the loo...
Our host, Jangil Hizirbak, was very interested in watching Freda and Edie play
cards. We hung around in the sunshine for most of the morning before retracing
our steps to the bus.
Looking back to the Tian Shan foothills from the path.
Actually, the description above stretched the truth a little...we did walk up
into the mountains, but never found a yurt! We made do with one (admittedly
fairly pleasant) at the edge of this tourist yurt encampment (left) down in the
valley. The throngs of Chinese tourists and ever-present litter also had a
negative impact on the trip, but looking back, we DID have a worthwhile
experience. Best of all, Lesley chatted up one of the Security Patrolmen down at
the road and came away with a volunteer armband as a souvenir!
After Shuixigou we spent a day or two in Urumqi before another
20+hour train journey to Lanzhou, capital of Gansu Province. Lesley
braved the queues at the train station ticket hall, and the following day we
were heading south to Chengdu (this time only 18 hours) on a train which
had originated in Lhasa and was fitted out with pressurized carriages and oxygen
ports! As we had already braved the Chengdu to Kunming line twice before,
we cheated and flew this penultimate leg of our journey! One more 7 hour bus
journey and we were back in Simao...
Kazakh felt rugs at Shuixigou, Tian Shan
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