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I spent most of the day traveling. First, I took a three and a half hour flight from Beijing to Urumqi. That's about the same distance as flying from New York to California.

China 2001 - Part Three: Kashgar

Dougburnett
2003-11-24 10:03:29

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Kashgar, Friday, September 7

I spent most of the day traveling. First, I took a three and a half hour flight from Beijing to Urumqi. That's about the same distance as flying from New York to California. Urumqi is in the far northwest corner of China, in Xinjiang province. It's surrounded by mountains and deserts and is a hard place to get to by land travel. One of its claims to fame is that no city is farther for an ocean than Urumqi.

A couple of interesting thing happened on the flight. First, besides showing how to use the seatbelt and oxygen masks, the safety movie also shows how to operate the flush toilet. It made me wonder about my fellow passenger.

Then there were the two Chines guys in my row - apparently they had never flown. Even after attentively watched the safety movie, the stewardess still had to assist them with their seat belts.

Anyway, I had the window seat and the guy in the middle clearly wanted to look out. Stupidly, I invited him to do so and after that I had to deal with his bobbing head as he explained what he was seeing to his companion. This went on for as long as I could stand it and finally I got up and offered my seat to the guy on the aisle. After that they stayed glued to the window as we flew over the Gobi desert.

I had a 4-hour layover in Urumqi - not enough time to visit the city and way too much to just sit around the airport. Luckily I met a Swiss couple that had come in on the same flight and were also heading to Kashgar. We spent the time drinking beer and swapping travel tales in the airport restaurant.

The next leg of my journey was only about an hour and a half. We flew over dramatically eroded hills with snow-capped mountains in the background. In Kashgar we shared a taxi into town.

After checking into the Seman hotel, I set out for a quick walk. The streets were ...