Set off to Tianchi Lake by bus (80 Kuai return) from Renmin park in Urumqi. The weather was cold and rainy and the bus ride was pretty weird - we drove through Urumqi for ages picking up other Chinese tourists from various places and then stopped on the highway to refuel at a petrol station. This stop was pretty bizarre, as only one car or truck or bus could refuel at a time - although there were eight pumps. So all the people inside the bus were herded out to wait in the cold at the other end of the petrol station. Then after about 20 minutes the our bus was finally allowed to refuel.
Just before we arrived at the lake we stopped at the obligatory Chinese medicine presentation/store. I don't get the Chinese tourists - I think if the bus companies didn't stop at one of these stores trying to flog medicine, jewelry, silk or any other useless souvenir, the tourists would actually be quite unhappy about it. It's a part of the experience of the trip, and everybody - except the foreigners - willingly files out of the bus and into the stores.
We arrived at the entrance to the lake - where we had to pay a hefty 100 Yuan entrance fee - and then I had to change into a smaller bus (another 20 Yuan), as I didn't feel like lugging my backpack up the serpentine road. I walked to Rashit's Yurt on the southern shore of the lake, past all the horrible Chinese tourist facilities that have sprung up on the one side of the lake. Concrete benches and tables in the shapes of toadstools and tree stumps line the beginning of the path - the area is called "fairy walk", but it luckily stops after a while and the Chinese tourists don't seem to walk any further, as there is only a "normal" path around the lake. Rashit is a Kazakh who taught himself English and has made a good living with renting out a yurt and providing three meals a day for 50 Yuan. I was the only person there, as the Olympics have made getting a visa nearly impossible and the flow of tourists to Xinjiang this year has been extremely low. Most people I talked to were really pissed off about the Chinese government's restrictive visa policy - for some it has meant a dramatic decline of their income.
After leaving my backpack in the yurt I explored the surroundings along the lake and then it started raining again, so I headed back to the camp. Rashit's wife gave me a huge bowl of stew and the little coal oven in the yurt made it nice and warm. I ate by candle light and the carpet covered interior glowed in a lovely orange and red. Tianchi Lake lies at 2000 meters above see-level and during the first night I woke up and had to throw another couple of blankets over me - the oven had burned all it's coal and it was bitterly cold! The felt blankets were so heavy that I could hardly move under them, but it was definitely better than freezing.
The next morning the sun was shining and I got a tasty potato stew for breakfast and then I set of into the surrounding mountains for a long hike. The mountains here have an uncanny resemblance to the mountains near Oberammergau in Germany. It really felt strange knowing that I was in China, but thinking that everything looked so very familiar and like "home". I didn't see anybody the whole day except for some shepherds in the distance that were herding sheep and goats. When I stopped for a late lunch in the afternoon I was suddenly joined by three little kids who were looking after four young cows. Only one of them could speak Chinese so we had a little conversation about how many cows (6) and how many sheep (23) the family owns. I shared my two oranges I had packed with them and then they discovered that I had some chewing gum with me, so I also parted with that! It was already late late in the afternoon and I headed back down to the lake to arrive just in time for noodles and a cold beer. Three other travelers from Germany, England and Spain had arrived during the day, so we spent the evening talking. The yurt was definitely much warmer with four people sleeping in it and the weather was much better too, so I wasn't cold anymore.
I woke up the next morning with a really bad sunburn on my arms and neck - although I had put on lots of sunscreen the mountain sun had been too much! I covered up and headed out for another day in the mountains - this time I walked around the lake past the touristy area along the path that leads all around the lake. Strangely enough nobody seems to walk past the temple. The Chinese tourists just head back and so I was completely alone. The path was pretty new, but in some places nature had reclaimed the path already, with mudslides and rocks covering the path at times. Some goats above me ran through the forest and small rocks started to pelt down the mountainside. One of them hit my arm and left a nasty bruise. I was lucky the rock wasn't any bigger and that it only hit my arm! I had decided to hike up the mountain exactly opposite of Rashit's camp, so I left the path and started to climb up a ridge. The scenery was amazing and it was serene and quiet - something I have really missed while living in China! And again I didn't see another person until I had reached the peak! Like the day before a shepherd turned up from nowhere. He was clearly surprised to find a foreigner up on his mountain, but I managed to tell him that I was staying at Rashit's camp, and that seemed to clear everything up. He didn't want any of my raisins I was eating and headed off to his sheep again. I stumbled across some Edelweiss and Gentian on the way down, which made me think of the Alps again! I took a different route down the mountain through a river gully and then arrived back at the yurt just as it was getting dark. I was really hungry and ate my huge plate of hand-pulled noodles in an instant!
The next day I relaxed and took the bus back to Urumqi in time to watch the opening ceremony of the Olympics. The atmosphere in Urumqi was a little intense with a lot of army vehicles patrolling. The soldiers looking pretty fierce with their machine guns. I watched the ceremony at the hostel I was staying at and was pretty amazed how the Chinese pulled everything off. When I get back to Beijing I will go to the women's Hockey final I think - friend's have a ticket and have invited me! It will be interesting to catch some of the atmosphere of the Olympics when I'm back.
