China 2014: Urumqi and beyond

As I mentioned in my last post, I was now on an overland trip with a UK company. We travel by a truck that has been converted into a well-outfitted vehicle capable of carrying passengers and gear, that can (hopefully) get through almost any road conditions (including when there isn't a road). This trip started out a little bit different. The truck ended up with some customs issues when it crossed the border from Kyrgystan, apparently due to a government official there copying a wrong number onto a form. Long story, but the Chinese officials were trying to say that the truck was stolen (it was not). Apparently a lot of money started changing hands between the overland tour company and the Chinese officials, who made everything as difficult as possible to straighten out. Rather than leave us stranded in Kashgar for an undetermined amount of time, we ended up flying to Urumqi instead of driving for two days to get there. Then they just rented buses to take us from place to place until the truck and Jim (our driver) finally got everything squared away and caught up with us in Turpan four days later.

The Urumqi airport

Urumqi wasn't a super comfortable place to be. Because of the truck bombings that happened at a market only a month earlier, there was a huge police presence and everyone seemed on edge because of the police. I was glad that we didn't spend very long here. Even without that, it's really just a huge city with not much to see.

We had dinner in Urumqi at a Chinese restaurant. Just when we finished dinner, the guy in the dark blue shirt approached us and introduced himself as the president of the local Bank of China branch. He gave us a bottle of Chinese liquor and wanted to drink with us.

After spending the night in a hostel in Urumqi, we took a bus to Tian Shan (Heaven Mountains) to spend two nights there near a lake in a yurt. It sounds better than it actually was. I would describe it more like a yurt version of a trailer park. On the plus side, we did have a key to use an actual toilet (porta-potty type) instead of just having to go outside in nature.

Some of the views of the mountains and lake were pretty nice though, especially when you walked a bit to get away from the masses of Chinese tourists.