Our first stop of the morning was Mazar Village which is a 2000 year old Uighur village. This was a real eye-opener- given all the publicity regarding the Uighur people is was a wonderful experience to see how they live and how they have managed to be so successful in such harsh conditions. They have become amazing farmers. The melons, dried fruit, grapes and fruits they produce are the best we've tasted. Their homes are well adapted to their environment- a ground floor courtyard always with beautifully painted/decorated double doors (nearly always featuring blue). There is a huge painted day bed where they sit to eat and then upstairs bedrooms but they often sleep on the roof as the summer temperatures are often up to 50 degrees. We spent quite a long time wandering around the village watching construction of adobe (mud-brick) walls and other repairs. The main population of the once 1000 strong village has, however, "relocated" so you do wonder what's really going on. The local school has also been closed and the children go into Turpan (40 km) for schooling.
We then stopped off at the "fire-mountain" which plays an important role in some of the very early silk road story but is just a mountain with interesting formations really.
Lunches and food generally has changed markedly as we've moved west. Now very strong Muslim/Islamic influence with more lamb & beef (no pork of course) Noodles replaces rice and more spices involved. Very tasty -quite like Turkish food again.
After lunch we headed to Jiaohe Ancient city which was started 3000 years years ago and abandoned in the 13th century. It was built on a plateau between two rivers and carved out of the rock with supplementary mud brick structures. There were remains of 3 Muslim temples, houses, wells and government buildings spread across a an area about 1.2 kilometres long and almost 1 km wide. 10000 people used to live here. Another fascinating place to visit.
Last visit for the day was to a museum and actual example of the Karez system that the Uighur people developed to provide the water for their villages and farm irrigation. This was astounding. Starting near the high mountains, they dug vertical wells, some up to 90 metres deep, every 20 metres as they worked towards their farmland which was situated up to 10 km away. As the land sloped dow, the wells became shallower and were then were joined at the base to form a channel. As the water was very cold the channel opened into a pond from which the warmed water was distributed via open channels for farm irrigation. This system is considered the next ancient engineering feat from the Great Wall- and I would have to agree. Incredible.
I'm doing the first part of today's blog as we're driving on a massive freeway through a mountain valley heading for Urumqi - a 2.5 hour drive and we wont be there untill about 9 pm - next bit will be done after dinner! Not quite as smooth as the train but pretty good really.
Well, we arrived in Urumqi right on schedule (9.00 pm) but decided not to go to the restaurant for dinner - We'd been nibbling bits along the way so just head for bed after a big day. One interesting event as we went through one of the toll points - a policeman pulled Chan our driver over and Lucy had to get out, present all her paperwork and then he asked for our passports as well - photographed on his phone. Interesting.
Later start in the morning so if I set the alarm properly we should get breakfast and have a relaxing time before the adventures of the day commence,
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