After our sunset dinner last night, we stayed up till midnight when we caught a cab to another town about 75 miles away. At this town we caught our train to the next town on our list Urumqi (烏魯木齊) further NW. We had the upper hard sleeper again and this was our first time back to this section after our worst experience on a train earlier in the trip. This time though wasn't so bad, probably because we knew what we were getting into and we were really really tired being out in the sun all day and the train not leaving until 3:30am. We passed out right away on this 15 hour train ride only to be woken up by the train worker at 11:30 who said we would be there in an hour. It turns out it was a lot shorter than we thought it was, so that made it an even better trip!
 |
| From 77 Days in China |
Charlotte looked ok on the hard sleeper
 |
| From 77 Days in China |
Well a lot more comfortable than me
 |
| From 77 Days in China |
Our current location
Uyghur People (維吾爾人)
We are far enough into the NW of China that the people are starting to look less Chinese and more middle eastern. In this city it is probably about 50/50 Chinese and Uyghur people (維吾爾人). While there seem to be a lot of people that are mixed race in the city, there are still a lot of people who look totally Uyghur, which means they look more middle eastern than they do Chinese. Uyghurs are mostly all Muslim as well and they have a totally different language that is not based on Chinese at all, the language also is much closer to a Middle EasterArabic language than it is to Chinese. This is an area of the country where outside the city just last year there were riots as the people do not like the Chinese government. It seems in order to keep the region under control, the priority is Urumqi (烏魯木齊), the largest city in the area, so it is full of police and military as well as more propaganda painted on the walls than other areas of the country.
 |
| From 77 Days in China |
You can see a sample of the written language on the train station
Dinner and Markets
Getting in early didn't help us get a lot accomplished this day, still tired we checked into our hotel and then relaxed. Finally got out again around 6 and went to a hostel that could help us learn more about the area. Then we went to a restaurant the hostel suggested and got some really good lamb cooked multiple different ways. We then headed to a couple different street night markets as well as a large walmart like store called Carrefour (家樂福). Still not recovered we called it an early night and headed back to the hotel
 |
| From 77 Days in China |
Lamb pie
 |
| From 77 Days in China |
Lamb on a stick
 |
| From 77 Days in China |
Bread
 |
| From 77 Days in China |
Fruit
No comments:
Post a Comment