We stayed another four nights at the Xinrong Hotel in Urumqi following our return from the Taklamakan Desert, taking it easy while we decided our next move. I spent a few hours at the row of DVD shops across the road, thumbing through their extensive movie stocks and adding to our own travelling collection. We travel with a laptop computer that while adding far too much weight to our backpacks, more than compensates for this with the information and flexibility it gives to our travels. Most mid-priced Chinese hotels provide a free broadband internet connection in their rooms and in conjunction with the laptop it gives us convenient access to email and internet searching. Internet cafes are OK but they don't compete with the convenience of having a connection in your room, available at any hour of the day. We can make hotel reservations or book air flights or check train timetables just a day or two ahead, with the result that we don't need to commit more than 24 or 48 hours ahead so if we like a place we can stay longer, or if not move on earlier. We also use the laptop to watch movies. After a hard day battling the hordes and listening to so many foreign sounds, it's pleasant in the evening occasionally to watch an English language movie.
The Urumqi DVD stores were particularly good and along with some movies, I bought a couple of music concert discs. One of these was an African American Gospel music doco with great songs. My favourite was the deliciously titled Jesus Dropped the Charges. Music to a sinner's ears. Amen Brothers & Sisters.
Our time in Urumqi came to end on Saturday night at 9pm when we left town in an overnight sleeper bus bound for Buerjin, 630km away in the far north of Xinjiang province. Our ultimate destination was Kanas Lake close to China's border with Russia, Kazakhstan and Mongolia. The countryside after leaving Urumqi was surprisingly reminiscent of Tuscany, except the tall thin trees that bordered the fields were poplars and the fields themselves looked like beans. Much later, a few hundred kilometres down the track, we passed through a giant oil field. All around as far as the eye could see were towers festooned with extremely bright lights and between them, oil pumps performed their silent relentless oscillations to bring the black gold to the surface. They also brought to the surface some sulphurous gases, for in several places along the road the bus was momentarily filled with the pungent odour of oil and rotten egg gas.
We arrived at Buerjin at 7am in the morning and after a quick breakfast at a roadside stall, hired a taxi to take us the remaining 200km north to Kanas Lake. We shared the taxi with a Chinese couple we met on the bus. Unfortunately the driver of this taxi was not good – he smoked, he chatted on his mobile phone, he played awful music, and he hurled his taxi at every one of the many hairpin bends on this mountain road. He also stopped several times to look under his vehicle and to lift the bonnet to replace blown fuses. But the mountain and grassland views from the window were stunning, and we passed many Kazakh nomad yurts that dotted the grassland.
We arrived at Kanas National Nature Reserve at 11am and we purchased our tickets to enter. This alpine reserve is the southern extremity of the Siberian taiga ecosystem and one of the major wetlands of China. Kanas Lake within the Reserve was formed eons ago when glacial debris permanently blocked the fast-flowing river that drains the mountains here. The Lake is about 25 km long and 2km wide, and just to the north of it is Friendship Peak, the 15,000 foot snow-covered mountain that marks China’s border with Russia and Mongolia. The Kanas Reserve is naturally forested with birch, pine, Siberian larch, spruce and fir. It is home to many animals including deer, marten bear, snow leopard, black stork and grouse, but we did not see any of these. The region is peopled by Kazakhs and Tuva Mongolians and their villages are scattered throughout the area.
After finding and booking into a hotel at the Reserve Village, we caught a shuttle bus to visit some of the spectacular lookouts over the river. Then in the late afternoon we went for a 10km hike along the Taiga Corridor that follows the Lake's edge and passes through stands of alpine conifers up to 500 years old. We returned to our hotel at around 8.30pm, still in the daylight, and after dinner listened to the stirring Kazakh music that blared out from the yurts just a hundred metres from our door.
