YO

After 2 weeks of writting bits and pieces I finally wrote the last chapter of our Xinjiang adventure.

As Arkan's (local Xinjiang singer who gracefuly combines traditional sounds with clasical/spanish guitar) song says: "Xinjiang is a good place". Every time I have the opportunity to share about my trip with someone I discover how blessed we are to have been in this "piece of middle east"...

These are some funny things that happened on the last days of out trip:

Day 9:

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• We woke up early to travel to Burqin, 7 people in the car: Martin, Stephan, Mark, Dom, Sheila, me and our Han chinese driver. We were too spoiled by having the wonderful experience of riding Ibrahim's car.. his sweet personality, knowledge of the best restaurants for the tipical food and amazing attitude made all the difference. In this new trip our driver was not as friendly as Ibrahim, wanted to take us to the restaurants he liked (that had nothing to do with tipical Xinjiang food) and made us wait outside of the militar gas station where he got free gas.
  
  
• We got too many snacks for the road: nuts, hazzlenuts, dates, raisins, sweets... we were tired of so many snacks after the second day.
  
  
• After a long trip we arrived to Burqin, we shared a delicious watermelon (that Dom broke gracefuly letting it fall in the floor) watching the sunset in the harbor and we went for more Polo and Kebabs in the night market where sellers wanted to drag us to their "restaurants".
  

Day 10:

• 
  
  
• Finally in our route to Kanas Lake! This is a beautiful lake very close to the border with Mongolia, Russia and Kazakstan. First of all, we needed to find accomodation so we went to see the houses next to the lake. After realizing that they would have no heating, seeing the wholes in the wooden walls, checking the temperature and by the hint of the huge "army style" green jackets they were offering us, we decided to go to the "village" to find a warmer place to sleep. We staid in a big wooden house in two rooms, one for the guys and one for the girls... on this time guys were luckier as they got the warm room while we were freezing in the morning trying to cover every centimeter of skin with the sleeping bag.
  
  
  
• On that day we rented horses from the people in the village (Mongolians) and went around with them for about an hour, time enough for Sheila to get scared of his temperamental horse and for the guide (who was walking behind us instead of riding with us) to get tired and request for the money (20 yuan) and the horses back.
  
  
• Other unforgetable moment in this horse ride was when my PM called me and I could hardly talk about the issue he needed to solve because
  1. my horse was jumping
  2. I did not know how to make it stop jumping
  3. I could hardly concentrate....
  
  
  
• We were so hungry after the ride that we went for a chinese restaurant... very expensive (for the standard of the region) but we got quite decent eggs with tomato.
  

Day 11:

Mark's stomack was not so happy so he preffered to stay in the village while we went trecking to a high point where we could see Mongolia and Russia.
In the afternoon and, after walking back to the village, we drove to a place closer to Ghost city where we spent the night in very unexpensive accomodation.

Day 12:

• We woke up to drive to Urumqi, in the way I finished the Bookseller of Kabul and had time to think and write about gender issues in Colombia... is incredible how much your way of looking at your own traditions changes when exposed to a different option... I will write a blog post about it later..
  We passed by "Ghost city", amaaazzzzzing! Took some beautiful pictures there.
  We said goodbye to Mark , Martin and Stefan before heading for Turpan, our last stop.
  

Day 13:

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• In Turpan, we got a lady taxi driver that took us through the interesting places... some places where more of a tourist trap (like the private show of Uigur music where we paid 5Y for a picture) and some where just really cool (like the place with 1001 types of raisins... yummi!)
  
  
  
• Flaming mountain is realllyyyyy hot!!! People says that in the middle of summer, you can fry an egg on the stones there...
  

Day 14:

• Go home, we had our last lunch with Lamb dumplings, coconut juice and kebab while we discovered that it might be time to go home...
  
  
• After boarding the bus at Turpan I discovered that I needed a badroom urgently. After stoping in the middle of the road and me, refusing to do what I needed in front of a bus full of people ++, we got to a public bathroom on the side of the road... I found what happiness ment in that moment
  
  
• We made it to the plane for 5 minutes! When arriving in the bus station the taxi driver discouraged us because we were too far away of the airport!!! Ahhh!! When we finally made it, the girl in the counter could not understand what an e-ticket was and tried to suggest me to buy a new ticket... at the end everything was fine thanks to my dear friend Jia...
  

This was an unforgetable trip!

Next day I was back working in Beijing... finishing work, preparing to say goodbye to my new-old friends and getting ready to come back to Oslo where friends, responsabilities, plans and adventures where waiting for me...

Last week I returned from a trip to a world where you can place the 1000 and 1 nights, Xinjiang, a muslim region of China that feels closer to the middle east than to China itself. I had an amazing journey full of warm people, incredible landscapes, lamb based cuisine and happy turkish/latin like music.

I had the priviledge of having Dom and Sheila as my partners in crime.

Dom is a 25 years old Swiss guy, interested in politics and international afairs and now doing a traineeship in Exoweb(Beijing)... he is the most Colombian/Swiss guy I have ever met (or imagine meeting). His favourite sentence is "open dialog", he will fall sleep playing "I have never" but can talk about Chinese politics all night long!

Sheila is 22 years old, born in Beijing and raised in New Jersey. She claims to have studied journalism (and some anthropology classes) in some Indiana university and has a very interesting/critical point of view on everything. She loves waking up early (which means waking us up early too). Thanks to her fluency in Mandarin she has been the unoficial (unpaid) translator and guide on this trip.

I usually plan and organize my trips on detail, specially when I am the one in charge of the trip, I take care of the smallest details and schedule in advance to save time while traveling. This time I wanted it to be different so, I let Sheila and Dom plan it and had just a rough idea of places we were going to. Not knowing the schedule got me in really funny situations where people asked me "where are you going tomorrow?" and I gave totally wrong answers... thanks guys for the amazing planning!!


Facts of every day:

• Day 0 (April 30th):
  

-> To go early to the airport we decided to overnight in my place. Sheila, with her wonderful sense of location, could not find her way to the two big 'China world apartment' towers in Guamao.
-> The first drink of the trip was a tribute to Norway: Aquavitt.. skål!
-> Pavel (the Mexican trainee) had to pick up Dom's keys in my place, doing it at 1am ment he also spent the night with us.

• Day 1 (May 1st):
  

-> After very little sleep we went to take the early plane to Urumqi. Before this trip, I thought that was only Krip (my best friend in Oslo) who had the bad habit of forgetting swiss knifes in her hand luggage, now I know that Dom is another victim of such habit forgetting a swiss knife in his hand bag on the way to Urumqi and a Xinjiang style knife on the way back to Beijing...
Then, we are finally in our way to Xinjiang!

-> 3,5 hours later we arrived to the capital city of the" Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region". While waiting for our next flight to Kashgar (or Kashi in Chinese) we felt hungry so, we had our first meal: pizza and carlsberg (it was not very tipical or exotic but, it was the only food we could find in the airport...)

-> 2 hours flight to Kashgar... zzzzz.

-> We were deciding how to get to Karakul lake and Tashkargan on the following days. We could either take a car rented from "Caravan cafe" (run by an Australian guy this place organized tourist activities in the region) or follow Mark's advice and take a driver he recomended us. Mark is Sheila's friend, journalist and traveling from Xinjiang to the countries in the middle east. Due to a significant price difference and after some discussion (yes, discussion and "open dialog" are key words of the trip) we decided to take Mark's driver: Ibrahim. I will never regret this decision! He is an amazing, happy, smilling person who played latin music for us, took us to the best local restaurants, taught us some Uigur language, drank and partied with us and more than a driver became a companion and a friend. (If you ever go to Kashgar contact him at 13999092675).

-> After having left the stuff in our hotel we decided to go and explore the old city. We found a laberint of small streets that transport you in history to anywhere in the middle east 100 years ago. Lots of local children around who were having fun with us taking pictures of them. Camels and sheeps in the streets, narrow alleys and colorful doors. Suddently we met a family who was slaughtering a cow in the middle of the street, they invited us to their house, introduced Sheila and me to their women, asked us (through Sheila) so much about our background and invited us next day for breakfast at 8am... it was such a priviledge to be welcome by this local family, so warm and friendly!

• Day 2 (May 2nd):
  

-> Living in the city I usually wake up with the noise of the cars, my neighbours or my alarm. It was a pleasure to wake up with the noise a big group of birds was making in a tree next to us.

-> Xinjiang is located in a different time zone than the rest of China and, even if the official time is the same, locals keep a "Xinjiang time" 2 hours before the official. So, the Uighur family from the day before had invited us for breakfast at 8 am and we (Sheila) asked one of the children if 8am was Beijing time or Xinjiang time Late for breakfast, he had answered it was Beijing time. Lost in translation we felt very bad when, at arrival, people told us we were late and the family had already got breakfast 2 hours before. Anyway, they received us as their very important guest, gave us tea, nan and polo (rice mix with carrots, meat and sometimes raising)... amazing breakfast!
Men were wearing white turbants which we had read means someone in the family had died.

-> Children in Kashgar are lovely! Not only because of their beautiful eyes but because of their happiness and excitement with the pictures we took from them. We have taken sooo many pictures in this trip from children, mountains and sheep... in that order.

-> A Beijing based organization charges entrance for the old city and we got to know that none of that money goes to the local people so, when we meet the lady trying to charge us for the entrance, we refused to pay and were escorted outside...

-> Before lunch we got in our way to Karakul lake with Ibrahim. We had lunch in the road: Laghman (thick spaguetti with spicy sauce). Ibrahim didn't join us because he was not hungry, he had eaten 8 boiled eggs already!!

-> There was such an amazing landscape on our road to Karakul lake. It was a gourgeous combination of mountains, desert and white peaks.

-> Arriving to Karakul Lake we wanted to stay in Yurts with the locals. There are some "oficial" yurts that costs 50 yuan ONLY for the entrance so, we tried to stay with a local family. We slept in this rounded yurt where they made dinner for us, prepared our accomodation = carpets in the floor.

-> Before going to sleep we learned some Uighur sentences, played "bulshit" (cards game) with Ibrahim (which he learned very fast) and spent a great time with the locals under the light of a candle. I haven't felt so far away from technology, electricity and even modern plumbing in a long time... it was awesome!

-> My last memory of the night was to go running to the bathroom (behind the stone in front of the lake) in a freezing cold, stars painted night.... the view was incredible!


More pictures of our journey at:

My local version of day 1, 2 and 3 pictures : http://my.opera.com/yennyotero/albums/show.dml?perscreen=60&id=72617

Dom's page: http://www.flickr.com/photos/dondomingo/

Sheila's page: http://www.flickr.com/photos/96434059@N00/sets/72057594134505132/

Soon to come about this trip:

- Meeting a whale and a chinese "mamasita" from Belgium.
- Riding horses and cammels 4000m over sea level.
- Pico + baijiu = party night in Urumqi!
- Stefan and Martin from Pakistan
- Kanas lake
- The 1000 and 1 snacks in our way to Mongolia
- Lamb, lamb and more lamb...

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If you fish the whale, the whale will die