YO

I could write sooooo much about this adventure but, considering that now at home I have tons of things to do, I better just transcript the notes I have and keep it as short as possible..

Also, you can read a beautiful version of the trip at Sheila's page:
Karakoram is cok guzel!
Kashgar Memories

What else happened in Xinjiang??

Day 3:

-> After the coldest night ever we met an amazing couple from Belgium: Koby and Cho. She has chinese background but has lived in Belgium most of her life. They met in Europe doing their masters and decided to go to China to learn Mandarin so, they have spent the last 8 months in Beijing. It would have been great to meet them in BJ... they are very fun and interesting people and would have loved to spend more time with them!

-> We spent the whole day riding camels and horses to the glacier... 8 hours riding could be felt in our legs the day after!!

-> In the night we got some beers and the local guys showed us some dancing with local music from a VCD. We played "who smiles the last" and Koby, trying to make us laugh, was very succesful with stupid sentences like "If you fish the whale, the whale will die".... hilarious!

-> Finally I had a good night sleep! It was warm with all us 5 in the yurt... Dom was the only brave enough to wake up to watch the sunrise.

Day 4:

-> We had lunch with Ibrahim in the Best restaurant in the town, kebab, polo... yummi!!

-> We went to Taxkorgan, "the last town before the border with Pakistan". We had some beers in the Stone city and waited for the sandstorm that never arrived.

-> Ibrahim loves latin music... our background music was the "Zorro" (Antonio Banderas) soundtrack, "cambio dolor", Shakira, JLo and many others...

-> We met our friends again in the hotel, they could recognize our room because it was the one with beers in the window (we were trying to cool them down...). After dinner, we stayed up talking about chinese politics until 6am! (Is funny how Dom was falling sleep when we talked about sex but he woke up when the conversation was about chinese politics... )

Day 5:

-> Returning to Kashgar gave us an interesting feeling of going back to civilization. Warm weather, lots of people, noise everywhere...

Day 6:

-> Sleep in!! Finally Sheila let us sleep longer ..

-> It was time for shopping, go around and get some souvenirs.

-> In our first visit to Kashar we heard this song that was stuck to our minds for a long time. When returning, we went back to were we have heard it and the guys there played guitar for us, gave us free flamenco/uighur lessons and burned a CD for us... lovely!

-> We had lunch in the best restaurant in Kasgar, it is called "Intizar" and they serve wonderful "polo" with raisins!!

-> We met for the last time our friends and went for dinner in a place where we could dance. As our table neighbours were having "baiju" we decided to give it a try and discover an interesting mix: "Pico + baijiu"...

-> After all the baijiu we felt like dancing so we went to the local disco... some great moves there!

Day 7:

-> We had a few hours to go to the bazaar before leaving to Urumqi. We visited the animal market (which I did not like so much for the way they treated the animals) and the sunday bazaar (where I got a carpet!!).

-> 24 hours in the train sounds like a long time so, we tried to get food enough for the trip... we got so many snacks (and so tired of them) that we ended up having "tomato and eggs" from the "food car".

- We slept sooo much! At some point we had nothing to do so we started painting Dom's foot in our version of Indian style.

Day 8:

-> 24 hours passed really fast, we slept a lot, read, write and discussed Sheila's life and positivism... (sorry Sheila babe, that is what I remember..)

-> Finally we arrive to Urumqi and meet Dom's fiends: Stephan and Martin, two very interesting Swiss guys (though Martin is really a French) who live in Pakistan.

-> We arranged everything for going next day to Kanas lake...

Soon (well, as soon as I can) I will post the last entry about this trip...