Xinjiang Museum, Urumqi

Yesterday, we visited the Xinjiang Museum where we saw the amazing and intriguing mummies – some more than 4000 years old – which have been found in the area.

We took a stroll through the Red Hill Park on a cold a blustery autumn day. We were glad we had gloves and scarves! There were a few families out walking, and more appeared as the sun came out.

There was some confusion about our hotel. The one we were supposed to stay at had been pulled down a year ago! It was half way through a complete re-build.

But we were ‘upgraded’ to a 5* hotel, which was fine – nothing special; a typical ‘business’ hotel – could have been anywhere in the world.

25th October:

Our last day in China, and we ended on a high note with a journey into the snow-capped mountains to visit Heavenly Lake, 2000 metres up in the Tian Shan mountains. We had read about this lake in 1987 in Vikram Seth’s travel book From Heaven Lake. We had never imagined that one day we would visit it ourselves! We were so lucky. Two days before it had started snowing, and the whole area had turned into a magical Christmas card scene – as the blurb says:

“Nestling among Alpine scenery, with melted snow as its source, lies Heavenly lake. Its crystal clear waters are surrounded by green pastures dotted with the yurts of nomadic Kazakhs, and the silvery mountains soar into the blue sky, their slopes full of fragrant pine and juniper”

I couldn’t have put it better myself!

Krishnad

October 2009

http://blog.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/krishnad/1/1256463776/tpod.html