Profile
Blog
Photos
Videos
Mom and I stopped in Urumqi on the way north from Turpan, but it was only a stopover point while we met up with fellow traveler and mom's co-worker that we traveled with in Thailand, Becky, before heading out of town to Tianchi Lake. It is still an interesting (though ugly) city, being that in this part of the country, the Chinese population is decidedly less Han and more Uiger (muslim.)
First we took our sweet time getting up in the morning and so ended up missing the buses and ended up hiring a cab to drive us all the way out there. It still wasn't terribly expensive though. We got to the parking lot at the bottom of the hill and immediately were greeted by Ras***, a yurt owner we had heard about from our guide books and others who had ventured there before us. We were planning on staying in one of his yurts on the lake shore that night, so he was immediately accomodating to us (though I suspect he would have been anyway, he was quite the Kazakh gentleman) and helped us find lunch (DELICIOUS handmade noodles at a little old lady's stand/house) then waited while we ate before directing us to the hiking trail up the hill before setting out himself.
We three proceeded up the path and a ways up came to a little lake that had the most beautiful turquoise water. We walked along its edge until, crossing a little stream, mom and I got stung by bees on our ankle and lip respectively, then we more ran around its edge. Ow. It has been years since I was last stung by a bee! That reminds me of my sister when she went through a bee-petting phase some 15 years ago She was always so surprised when she got stung, how odd....
At the top of the mini mountain, (after being cut off once by a small herd of sheep heading downhill) we found Ras*** waiting for us again to lead us through the woods on the scenic route to his yurts.
The Heavenly Lake itself was a beautiful mountain lake spoiled only by the hoards of Chinese tourists on one side who took the cable car up to the top, snapped a picture or two, then took the cable car down again. The four of us walked around some of the lake's perimeter before finding ourselves at a small encampment of yurts, several owned by Ras*** and his family, and the rest belonging to other herding families. Our yurt was wonderful, it was covered in rugs on the floor and the walls and also had a small stove and heavy blankets to keep out the cold. There, Ras***'s family fed us some very strong Kazakh dishes which were great, if a little strong on the mutton.
That first evening at the lake, Becky, Mom and I decided to climb up the (practically vertical) hill behind the yurts. It took a while, but eventually we were several hundred feet above the lake and thus had a spectacular view. We then we came across a herd of goats that we observed for a while and when they left, we proceeded to take lots of ridiculous, fake, falling-down-the-hill-pictures of each other with arms flailing about. Good times.
The only bad things about the yurt experience was that there was no running water (i.e. NASTY bathroom) and no lights (i.e. no reading Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows after sunset.) Ah well, we survived. Though the HP thing almost made me a crazy person.
It's a good thing we had gone exploring the first day, because the next morning the fog rolled in. And I mean rolled in. I watched it come around the bend and half expected the prow of a mystical pirate ship or Dawn Treader to burst through the front of it. We soon walked the couple of hours back along the lake, down to the parking lot and caught a bus back to Urumqi.
- comments