4 Days in a Chinese tour bus...

Well, it's an experience all right. Probably one I won't sign up for again soon, but otherwise it would have made getting to Lake Kanas nigh impossible.

On the morning of the 3rd (I'm not sure of the days anymore, but the dates seem ok) after stuffing our bellies with steamed dumplings, we set off on a tour of Lake Kanas. A giant busload of Chinese people, mostly locals from Urumqi but also some from Shenzhen and Guangzhou too, but Tegan and I were the only ones who weren't Chinese.

We scored the back seat, because of the extra legroom, but soon discovered that it came with a constant icy wind from one of the windows that didn't close properly. Even after stocking up on extra warm things, we hadn't really thought to wear them on the bus, and shivered through the first half of the 10 hour busride to Bu'erjian...

We stopped briefly at "the Ghost City of the World" which is a high-falutin name for a bunch of wind-carved rocks in the middle of the desert. It was pretty amazing, especially when the sun came out and turned it all a kind of Australian reddish-brown, I had a sudden desire to go and see the Bungle Bungles... But these hills are made of sand and clay, and surrounded by desert with nothing taller than about 20cm, growing few and far between. THese hills have camels, and brightly coloured carts pulled by billy-goats, and donkeys that you can ride on, tended to by red-cheeked Uighyr men in woollen jackets and caps.

It was great to stretch the legs after about 6 hours of bus-claustrophobia, and we had met one guy who spoke pretty good English, and talked about feral camels and donkeys back in Australia. He turned out to be a great help during the tour, as the tour guide didn't speak English past the very basics (still better than our Putonghua admittedly). We were stuffed back in the bus after seeing rocks shaped somewhat like turtles, peacocks and Tiananmen Gate...

As we got further north, it got colder, and soon there was snow outside... it was pretty exciting for us, but also awakened a fear inside me that comes from twisted and frozen memories of traipsing through the icy snow on the Peace Walk in Hokkaido... fear of the cold...

We finally arrived in Bu'erjian, the first step of the journey, quite late and after a miserable attempt at getting vegan food Tegan gave up, while I stayed to clean up the plates. Our hopes of hot showers were dashed by the unrelenting icy water streaming from the taps, so we gave up & went to bed.

Breakfast was fried dough (kind of like a donut but without the sugar), pickles and hot milky tea. Unfortunately I only found out about the fried dough bit until too late. Then, back on the bus, for another 3 hours of windy roads that zig zagged back and forth as they got inevitably higher into the snow-covered mountains...

There were shepherds out there in the snow, and sheep! brrrr. Every now and then we'd see a tiny little tent, which looked as if it was made of hides and felt, and now and then some snow-covered yurts, with smoke drifting up from their chimneys... It was cold on the bus, even with the extra layers...

We finally arrived at Kanas, and thankfully were able to hire some huge ex-army jackets which were kind of more like doonas, to put over the top of everything else. We then transferred to another, crammed on with yet more tourists, and took a 16km ride through the Park to the Lake. The views were spectacular... autumn-gold trees among the pine forest, snow everywhere, and an icy blue river tumbling along the rocks at the bottom of the valley. The highest peaks were covered in mist and cloud, and it looked COLD.

It's right up near the borders with Russia, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Pakistan, Tajikistan...

The local people are Mongolian Tuva people who live out near the lake in log huts which look too cold. There are a bunch of yurts set up too, but they're mainly for touristy purposes apparently. The Tuva make a living selling pine nuts, fox furs and horse rides to tourists. Their horses are short with big heads, but they look very sturdy and capable of running around the steep mountain sides around the area!

We all tumbled out at the Lake and followed our tour guide's relentless megaphone down to the lake's edge. There was a kind of pier built out over the water, where you can take speedboat rides across the lake (ahhhh the serenity), and a young boy walking around with a baby goat, you could pay him to hold the goat for a photo... Tegan and I stayed with the group just long enough to find out the departure time and then took off in the opposite direction, around the lake shore. We read some crazily translated signs about how the ecosystem is part of the Siberian Taiga, a stretch of pine forest that reaches north of Bu'erjian into Russia. Siberia, no wonder it's cold! The Ertix valley, where Kanas Lake lies, was formed by a giant glacier, which pushed mud & rocks down the valley as it moved. When the glacier retreated, it left behind it a really deep cleft valley and a wall which acted kind of like a weir as the ice melted & turned into a lake. The lake became Kanas, the river Ertix flows from Kanas to the Arctic Ocean - the only river in China which flows north. Lake Kanas happens to be the 2nd deepest morain lake in the world, at its deepest it's 188m or so of cold pure mountain water. Apparently Kanas and Bu'erjian is the area which gets China's first snow of the year. Tegan proved that she's nuts by heading straight for the water & having a good facewash, while it was all I could do to keep my fingers working in the cold.

The pine forest was pretty amazing, quiet with patches of snow unmelted in the shade. We walked around the lake until we thought we should turn around. I climbed a hill to take a photo of the lake and got yelled at by a guy in cammo gear, turns out I'd climbed up to the old shit-pits... the army uses the area around the lake for training sometimes, and it's illegal to take photos of military installations or soldiers, and I guess it's also illegal to take photos from their shit-pit area... anyway no dramas. We headed back around the lake, and took a walk by the river up to where the lake overflows its weir-like wall and gushes down the valley. So beautiful!

We stayed the night in some pretty basic dorms in Jiodenryu, a village of dormitory housing set up purely for the Kanas tourist industry. One lady snored all night, and another kept rustling around in plastic bags... ahh the joys of dormitories. It snowed again during the night, and the place was covered with powedery white the next morning. After more pickles and steamed buns we were out at the lake again, this time the tour was taking in a trip to the Tuva village, all in Mandarin unfortunately. So Tegan and I and our English speaking friend Leon headed for a walk along the river. We skipped stones, Tegan made a real live snowball & threw it at me, and we enjoyed the sun... We walked until it was time to head back, and got on the bus covered in little tiny crystals of snow. Pretty cool! Had to keep explaining to the other tourists that it doesn't snow where we're from, to their amazement. Urumqi is after all the hottest & coldest place in China.

Sadly that was it, and the bus headed back to Bu'erjian, where Tegan and I pigged out on coal-roasted sweet potatos, sweet popcorn, hot pastries, and fried tofu... yum.

Today was pretty much just another day on a bus. Desert all day, just desert. Lots of flocks of sheep attended by horse-riding shepherds, herds of cows and lazy-looking camels crossing the road at different times. The camels are amazing, huge shaggy things with double-jointed jaws that churn constantly, and swivelly necks that seem like they're on hinges. Their humps kind of flop around as they walk. I've never seen so many.

We also saw an extremely rare herd of wild horses, which are native to this area. Xinjiang is famous for its horses, one of the reasons it was initially taken over by China, all those centuries ago. The Kazakhs still have crazy horse-riding competitions. The wild horse apparently became extinct from the area and had to be reintroduced, and so now the huge endless-seeming desert is mostly protected for their well-being.

We pulled into Urumqi with a feeling kind of like coming home, at least returning to somewhere familiar after a bewildering few days of constant Mandarin. The tour experience had to happen at some point, and I'm glad we took it to Kanas, which would have been next to impossible to get to otherwise. While it was not quite the extreme pimped-up disco style tours you see in Thailand, the megaphone on its own was really a bit too much...