Hiking up To Tian Shi

The next day we locked up our luggage and headed off to find the bus to Tian Shi, or "heavenly lake". We made it, got a ticket and scrambled for a seat for the 3 hour drive to the northern side of the mountains. With a bewildering stop at a centre for traditional medicine, we eventually made it to the extremely touristy entrance to the park. The queue for the chairlift stretched down the road and wasn't moving fast, so we decided to take a bit of a walk up the hill instead. The track was about 4 or 5km long, and went up to an altitude of about 1700m. It was cold in the shade.

Along the way there were Kazakh women selling saffron, weird looking roots and mushrooms, cheap jewellery, and kebabs. We made it, and the first stop was the Deep Dragon pool, also called "little heavenly lake", spectacular reward for our efforts. Just above it was the "Suspended Rainbow waterfall" and then - we were there. Coming around the corner the view was staggering, a huge clear lake between pine-forested slopes of snow-topped mountains. The sun warm on the skin but the wind was pretty chilly. We sat and contemplated, then went to explore. By the lake's edge were racks of Kazakh costumery for those inclined to dress up and take photos. Their colours were amazing! Kazakh men kept coming up to ask if we wanted to go for a horse ride up along the mountains, and I would have loved to but we had to take the bus back that night. We strolled around and found a performance of traditional dance along with a cranking bass beat that would be at home driving along freo's cappucino strip.

We walked further up to the village of yurts perched on the hillside overlooking the lake. Perhaps not as traditional as they could have been, some of them wrapped in plastic & made with metal poles now Our companion was Pierre, an Italian professor of ancient Aramaic scripts with a passion for nomadic civilisations, in China for a conference. He was full of information about yurts & nomadic life, and pointed out the proper place for men's gear and women's inside the yurt, where we had hot milky tea and dried plums.

Eventually we had to go, and we queued for ages for the chairlift, a silent and speedy ride back down the hillside it took us 2 hours to climb!