Our Trip to XinJiang: Part 3 of Many 14

Day 3:
From Yuli (尉犁), we headed towards Korla (庫爾勒) about 54 kilometres away, which is also in the Bayingol region of XinJiang.  On the way, we stopped at the Luoburen Underground Canyon (罗布人地下大峽谷).  However before we got there, we passed through our first Caves of Thousand Buddhas (千佛洞).  This site was a really small one, and there wasn't actually a thousand, but we learnt as we went along our trip that there were many "Caves of Thousand Buddhas" in different regions as Buddhism is one of the main religions in XinJiang.

These ones were actually really poorly kept as you can see and rather small.  We didn't understood the point of these at the time, but would later on after seeing and experiencing how they preserve the bigger sites.

The map posted outside the entrance of the Luoburen Underground Canyon indicated that the length of the canyon is 4.9 kilometres long and 10-30 metres deep with many paths coming off of it.

Siu Bo warned us that there could be mosquitos, but somehow we still forgot to apply and bring bug spray with us.  (Flora was the only one who packed bug spray on this trip.)  He showed us the way down and pointed out various things at the bottom.  We spent about 5 minutes in the canyon before we realized just how many mosquitos there were!  We quickly went back up to the car and sprayed ourselves of repellent before heading back down again.  I swear that's got to be the longest hike I have ever made with that many mosquitos!  It didn't help either that we were the only people in the canyon!

Below is one of the more (if not most) interesting forks we took.  It was named "Heavenly Valley" (通天谷), or at least that's what Google Translate gave me.  The sign indicated that this was one of the forks where it was possible to climb out of the canyon and if you do, you'd be blessed and be able to accomplish anything!

Left: Where we encountered our first obstacle.  Flora tested the waters (as she was a regular rock climber) and led the way!
Right: I was the second to climb up, looking back down at Annie and Kel.

What we found at the top.
Left: The path after the first climb.
Right: The path ends at another climb.

Flora evaluated this one and told us it was possible for us to get up without any equipment, but too slippery to guarantee a safe trip back down so we decided it was better to play it safe since this was still our third day into the trip.  I'm still baffled as to how Annie did the first climb and the hike itself as she was wearing these white loafers the whole way.  You might wonder why we needed to get back down.  Well, if you remember the picture of the map at the top, we had to get to the end of the canyon, as Siu Bo was waiting for us there.  So really, we had to walk the whole 4.9 kilometres,  there's no turning back!

Left: Kel walking up the canyon's exit.  We weren't the ones to pile the rocks into an arrow.
Right: Our lizard friend bidding us farewell.

After leaving the underground canyon, we headed to Korla (庫爾勒) for lunch, or should I say lamb feast? Nom nom nom!  It was one of the most delicious meals we had in XinJiang!  Their lamb skewers where the best ever!  Later on in the trip we came upon these other skewers which was comparable.  I think we ended up rating those first place, but these came in a close second!

Don't they look yummy?  Hmm.. looks like a few are missing...

Oh, oh! Flora's excited waving one!  And Kel's already started on his!

Next up, leg of lamb!  Look at the huge stack!

LoL the leg is so big Flora needed chopsticks to assist (aside from her hands).  Look at Kel go!

We had lamb rack afterwards, too!  (As well as another order of skewers!)  But they were so good, we devoured them before we took any pictures.  We all agreed that an ice cold beer would have made this the perfect meal.  However, we came to realize that cold drinks were a luxury and not available everywhere.  The restaurant had warm, room temperature beer.. eww.. We went next door to the convenience store and got cold pop and green tea instead.  That ended up to be our norm at most meals.

After dinner, we headed to the Kizilgaha Beacon Tower (克孜爾朵哈烽火台) in Kuqa (庫車) about 290 kilometres. Siu Bo informed us that there were admission fees if we were to go through the regular route and really, it was just a fire beacon tower and nothing else, so he took us through a back door by driving off road through a dry river bed instead.  He said we could still take pictures from below, but if we still want to go up the proper route, we could do that afterwards.  It was quite an adventure driving through the river bed as there were random craters everywhere!  The view from the bottom was pretty breathtaking!  In the end, we didn't end up going through the main road as we had more fun taking pictures from where we were.

The Kizilgaha Beacon Tower

Two of our many attempts!

Left: Gotta love Siu Bo's car! In case you were wondering how Flora got there, she's actually climbed up Siu Bo's spare tire!
Right: Kel and Flora likes to climb things.. they found a hole at the side of the river wall.

Our last attraction of the day was the Grand Kuqa Mosque (庫車大寺).

Our Trip to XinJiang: Part 2 of Many 14

Day 2:
We woke up the next day and left Ürümqi (烏魯木齊) towards Yuli (尉犁), in the Bayingol region of XinJiang.  According to Google, we traveled approximately 515km that day!  As we were leaving Ürümqi, we stopped at the Ürümqi Goldwind wind farm.  I'm sure most of us have seen windmills before, but the amount of windmills at that windfarm was unbelievable.

(people pics via Flora's camera)

After the wind farm, we were on our way to Yuli.  I'm sure you'd wonder, "515km in a day? Don't you get bored in the car?"  Well, not really.  Besides having brought books to read, we were pretty mesmerized by our surroundings.  You have to understand, Toronto's pretty flat.  There's not much around when we go on road trips and such.  Check out the scene we were driving through.  We were pretty much "ooohing" and "ahhhing" the whole way!

By late afternoon, we got to The Luoburen Village (罗布人村寨) in the Taklamakan Desert (塔克拉玛干沙漠). The Taklamakan Desert is said to be the 17th biggest desert, covering an area of 270,000km sq.

Left: We were greeted by camels
Right: It's like paradise!

Right: We rode these sand dune buggies.  Such fun! (Annie was scared though, so she didn't go for the ride.)

We hiked through the desert for a bit after and waited for the sunset.  No luck though, there were a few rare clouds in the sky and they ruined our shot.. but as you can see, we found ways to amuse ourselves during the wait!

Right: We met a new friend in the desert!

During our wait, someone (I believe it was Flora) suggested it might be fun to dive/slide down the sand dune. (It looked pretty steep.)  Kel volunteered for the dive.. here's a video Flora took.. :)

We left The Luoburen Village during the sunset and went for dinner.  (Might I add that during that time of year in XinJiang, the sun sets after 9pm.)  By the time we got back to the neighbouring town of Yuli, it was completely dark.  The restaurant where we had dinner was having a power outage, (apparently that was quite common in small towns) and was running off of its own generator.  Over dinner, we debated whether we would stay in town for the night or drive a bit further to a bigger city.  The main considerations here was that there weren't any hotels in this town for foreigners, only for locals.  (Siu Bo later explained to us that in China, hotels have 2 different permits/licenses.  One for serving locals, and another for foreigners.  Besides needing to meet different sets of criteria, the foreign license is also more expensive.  So unless they've got arrangements with tour groups or know they can recuperate the costs, they'll likely just opt to serve locals.  And when I say locals, I mean citizens of China.)  To stay the night, we'd have to find a hotel that would overlook the fact that we're foreigners, or be able to sneak in successfully, and not mind the sub par conditions.  If we were to head to the next town, it'd be an hour and a half drive, meaning we won't get there til after eleven.  On top of that with our first attraction the next day, we'd have to backtrack 45 minutes!  In the end, we all voted to stay the night (afterall it's just one night), but we all agreed at the end of our trip that accommodations that night was definitely at the bottom of the list.  Oh, and I wanted to add that the block did regain electricity about a half hour after dinner.  Otherwise, we'd have to borrow Flora's flashlight at the motel.  (Don't ask me why, but Flora is apparently equipped with a flashlight, headlight, and a book light... something to do with climbing and traveling with Annie haha) Oh, and another thing we learnt during our stay, hotels always claim they have a/c, but some either don't plug in their individual units, or they take away the remote so you can't turn it on.  At this place, they did both.  Kel attempted to plug it in, and the plug doesn't even fit the socket and from what I remember, he actually broke the plastic frame on the outlet trying to jam it in!