Lake karakul. Honestly it was smaller than I expected, but it was beautiful. The scenery in the desert changes rapidly from grey shale to lush greenery and then to brick red clay. Sometimes you have all three in one, with the juxtaposition creating great photo opportunities in an instant. The waning culture is apparent though. Instead of sporadic kyrgyz gers littered throughout the countryside, you see massive mining quarries, electrical buildings, and highways in its stead. Left behind are remnants of rectangular brick house half destroyed by the winds of time and half by the prowess of construction equipment. It is a conflicting issue when you bring emotion into development. China's development and governmental commitment to development is astounding. While corruption is rampant and there are officials being investigated every second for fraud or embezzlement, the political will to development is impressive on a scale I've never seen before. Whether it is pure entrepreneurialism or opportunism, people are getting more access to education, basic sanitary facilities, clean water, and electricity - something Africa has to beg for and not get. But travelling through the countryside, you can't help but notice that the Uighur way of life is being infringed on. Mosques are no longer where they once were. Previously sparse urban spaces, are now increasingly invaded by massive multistorey buildings who look like they might be more comfortable in big cities like shanghai or Beijing. Heck, they're modeled after buildings in shanghai and Beijing. While I have witnessed several acts if kindness from the Han to the uighurs, there is a certain sense Of infringement when you have to interrupt an Uighur conversation to speak Han chinese. I don't think that the Uighur deliberately identify it as a nuisance or anything out of the ordinary, most uighurs my age have grown up with this arrangement and don't find anything wrong with it. But I guess I bring with me an outsider's sense of paranoia and prejudice from years and years of western anti-china reporting.