YO

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