Today was a travel day, pretty much.
We started off with another lazy lie-in until check-out at noon, which was much appreciated by all the people on our tour battling this cold. The day was, shockingly, chilly and rainy. Just to give you an idea of how rare that is for this area, our local driver said this was the first time he’d seen rain in 10 years! I certainly wasn’t complaining, since the forecast said it was supposed to be 44 degrees and in actual fact it was probably only about 17 or 18.
We packed up and loaded the private van, stopped for lunch at the same local restaurant (with the same mediocre food, but the driver was definitely getting kickbacks), and then set out on the 4-hour drive from Turpan to Urumqi, Xinjiang’s capital.
Our destination wasn’t actually Urumqi itself, but its airport to catch a flight to Kashgar tonight. However, as there are no flights from Turpan directly to Kashgar, this is the way we had to do it.
We set off after lunch in the van, driving along a well-maintained 4-lane highway through rocky, desolate terrain. The terrain gradually became more mountainous as we got nearer to Urumqi, and we could see snow-capped peaks in the distance. At one point, we passed an enormous salt flat, which looked much like what I’d imagine Bolivia would look like, only here it seems that nobody’s quite figured out how to turn it into a tourist attraction, since it was mostly empty.
Also, there were thousands of wind turbines everywhere in giant wind farms. China may be one of the biggest energy polluters on earth, but it seems that, in Xinjiang Province at least, they’re also investing quite a bit in wind technology. I doubt it would be that practical in the more densely-populated east, but out here, there’s lots of space and fewer people, so it seems to make sense.
We got to the airport around 5pm, got our boarding passes, and dumped the bags in a pile to wait for baggage check-in to open. Howard watched the bags while we had a wander around the airport. I tried to buy a coffee, but the woman first pretended not to understand me when I asked how much it was. Then she came out with the coffee and asked me for 58 yuan for it (roughly $10 US). Most. Expensive. Coffee. Ever. I normally don’t quibble about a few dollars of tourist tax now and again, but this was too much so I simply left the coffee on the counter and walked away. Instead, we sat on the airport floor and ate biscuits and just killed time on the airport WiFi until it was time for the flight.
More soon from Kashgar!