We arrived at Deheyan Turfan's nearest train station at 6am. We rejected the offer from a young English speaking Uigur in taking his taxi. Together with our new Canadian friends Cheryl and Glenn, we waited until 7.30am to board a public bus to Turfan. To get to Turfan from Deheyan, we had to travel another 1 hour (49km) on a bad, bumpy and desolate road, where half of the road was badly damaged by erosion.

Turfan, Tulufan to the Chinese, is located in a depression eighty metres below sea level, which accounts for its extreme climate - well over 40 degrees C in summer, well below freezing in winter. Little water ever reaches this area of scorching depressions, which in summer is the hottest place in China. However, surprisingly Turfan is an agricultural oasis, famed above all for grapes. Today, almost every household in the town has a hand in the grape business, both in cultivating vines and in drying grapes at the end of the season. Every house has its own ventilated brick barn, usually on the roof, the best spot for catching the hot desiccating winds that sweep through the area.

Turfan is an Uigur town with less Han Chinese communities. The Uigurs are Muslim who migrated from Europe centuries ago. The town appears more to Middle Eastern settlement rather than Chinese.

Turfan's downtown itself only amount to two or three quiet streets, nothing much to explore. Nearly all visitors to Turfan end up taking the customary tour of the historical and natural sights outside the town. We ended up taking half-day bus tour sharing with Cheryl and Glenn.

We visited legendary Flaming mountains, to Chinese it was made believed the mountain was burnt by the mischievous Monkey God " Sun Wu Kong" in Chinese novel Journey to the West, a highly embellished version of the story of a Chinese Buddhist Xuan Zang and his pilgrimage to India. We were told, in summer time the temperature around the mountain would be reaching more than 50 degree and the red sandstone hillsides, lined and crevice as though flickering with flame in the heat haze.

Our next stops covered from the remarkable Uigur's Mosque's tower - Emin Minaret, ancient city Jiache Ruins and the extraordinary Karez underground irrigation's channels. This 2000 years old underground network of canals formed more than 3000km longs, driving water from the snow mountains of Tian Shan. The site that we saw was obviously a small segment of them. This miracle network supplies the main source of water to Turfan.

Turfan by itself has little interest to explore and with the hot weather not many activities can be done during the daytime. However, washing might be a good choice. I did my washing in the morning, and it was record drying speed to have them dried up within hours.

As we were not arrived in its fruit season, which starts in September, we missed the chance to taste its' famous grapes and grape wine. In view of this, we only put up a night at Turfan and took off to Urumqi by bus the very next day. We split off with Cheryl and Glenn who headed off to Kashgar by taking 30 hours sleeper train.

Chapter Twelve- 19^th April

It was a relief to find out the road to Urumqi was bump free, as the seats were not really bumped certified. In the bus, we were trying to get to the right side of the bus to get better spot for filming snow mountains. However, we made the wrong judgement and ended up in the wrong side of the bus. The desert scenery with snow mountains backdrop was pretty enough to give the journey a touch of class. For journey heading to Urumqi from Turfan, always try to sit at the right side of the bus.

The scene over the city, with snowy Tian Shan Mountains in the background was spectacular. I was amazed to see Urumqi to be a fairly developed city with numbers of high rising buildings. I saw there were numbers of construction project going on in Ürümqi. I supposed this is the result of being industrial and economic capital of Xinjiang and by far the largest city in the region, with a population of well over one million.

Xinjiang Province is also known as Uigur Autonomous Region, Uigur people are the main ethnic group in this province. Other than Han Chinese, the others main minorities' representation are nomadic Kazakh, Huis, Mongolian, Kirgiz, Uzbek, Manchu, Tartar, Tajik. This province has vastly distinctive appearance to the Chinese cities in the east. Mosques and Arabic script is commonly seen. The features of the people here look more European than Chinese.

To many, Urumqi itself has nothing much to see. It is only a quick stopover on the way to more attractive sights at western side of China such as "Tian Chi"(Heaven Lake), Kashgar etc. Likewise, our stop over was to arrange a trip to Tian Chi (Heaven Lake), our final quest for China's Northwest exploration. Due to our tight work schedule, we were unable to travel in the recommended season in August to September. Hence, we had to place Tian Chi to be our last destination, where we hoped for warmer weather and the frozen lake would be dissolved by then.

As we traveled in off-season, there was only a hand full of foreign tourists and we were among the first batches in town. Due to this, we were managed to get a 50% discount off the normal room rate without any hard bargain at all. At the time we checked in to Hongshan hotel, it was under massive renovation to meet the coming peak season in May.

The hotel room was the smallest of all we stayed through out our whole trip. The room with tiny attached bathroom was as small as the room we had in our previous Tokyo trip. However with a substantial difference in price for RM40/night to RM500/nite respectively.

The weather was quite chilly at 15 to 18 degrees by the time we arrived. We were worried for our chances of getting to Tian Chi since most of the guidebooks indicated that the accessible time for this area is from May to September.

After settled in, Jwee Seng went to check up the arrangement to Tian Chi at Renmin Park, about ten minutes' walk west from Hongshan hotel. After inquiries, there was only one small van available for operation with condition of full load .The fare quoted was cut throatily high, triple as compared to the normal season.

To avoid the uncertainty of the requirement of full load, we took up 2 days 1 night private tour package offered by a Kazath's travel agent stationed in Hongshan Hotel. To guarantee a trip to Tian Chi, we ended up paying higher premium of 280 yuan/person for personal guided tour, return transportation, meals, entertainment and a night stay in Kazath's yurts.

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