I’ve said we are traveling in the desert, and that really means desert. Although the sandy, Sahara-like desert only makes up a small portion of the deserts here, they still certainly exist. Here are some phone photos of Galen trying to blend in.
I was satisfied with biking out to the Ruins of Jiaohe and the Emin Minaret, but we really wanted to get back to hitchhiking. We took a bus out to the rural town near the Bezeklik Caves, Erbaoxiang, or Second Fortress Village. After a forty minute, twenty plus mile ride across the desert, past the …
All of the guidebooks mentioned Emin Minaret. The tower was built in 1777 and finished in 1778. Its construction was blessed by the Qing Dynasty’s Qianlong Emperor to honor Emin Khoja, a local ruler and general who had teamed up with the Qianlong Emperor, though the details of their collaboration were always left vague. I …
I’ll be giving a presentation on some of our trip at UGA’s Tate Reception Hall in the Tate Student Center tomorrow, Thursday, September 4th at lunch, from 12-1. If you are in Athens, stop by.
The afternoon was hot. It was easily over a hundred degrees. We were in the dry, Turpan depression, near the second lowest point on Earth. My idea to bike to and back from the Jiaohe Ruins had seemed like a better idea earlier in the morning. Now, after two and a half hours wandering around …
We were able to get rinky-dink bikes and make our way out of Kashgar. It was not hitchhiking, but it was an unconventional means of transportation, and it gave us a chance to meet people and get a feel for the countryside along the six mile stretch between the city and the ruins of Jiaohe. …
I entered the museum’s exhibit hall. The air was quiet and the entrance dark. The sensation was not normal for China. It felt like I was entering a church, somewhere holy and slightly frightening. Inside the first exhibit, the rumpled body of a man lay on a wooden bed, his legs folded up, a white …
Turpan in Relation to Urumqi Xinjiang province is really two totally different places. The north and the south are distinct culturally, geographically and ethnically. The north is dominated by Han Chinese and our trips in the north were mostly snowy mountains and alpine pastures filled with Kazak herders. The southern half of Xinjiang is desert …
“Leave it as it is. You cannot improve on it. The ages have been at work on it, and man con only mar it.” – Theodore Roosevelt’s advice on the Grand Canyon Our recent trips out into Tianchi National Park and Nanshan have taught us a little about China and its wild spaces. …
The landscape shifted rapidly from farmland to lifeless desert hills to mountainous foothills speckled with shrubs. Finally, we arrived in the green cocoon of the Tianshan Mountains, at a place called Nanshan. Near the parking lot of Nanshan Getting out at the parking lot of Nanshan was not all that different from the parking lot …