:: zone3 :: Heavenly Lake

Friday, September 14. 2007

Heavenly Lake

A while since being online for more than a couple of minutes.

Spent two days at Heavenly Lake staying in Yurts (Gers). A beautiful mountain lake area off to the side of the Taklamakan desert. It's the source of some of the water for the Karez in the region. Was nice and relaxing spending a couple of days by the lake. The mountain are snow capped and looked a bit like home (a little like the Nelson Lakes area).

After the nice relaxing, on to long driving days in a bus... Although the views of the sand in the desert are amazing to see, it is a bit tiring spending 22 hours in a bus over a couple of days.

Had a great dinner in the local food markets of Korla. Very handy to my hotel, it springs up right outside it at about 1930. Was a bit of confusion during the ordering of us taking away the 1st lot of food to eat before the guy had stir-fried it. Still tasted fine. We let him cook the next couple of lots.

For the short time had at Minfeng, all the locals were very friendly, saying hi. They don't often get Western tourists, so were bit of a novelty.

After a bit more of buses are in Hotan. Saw a few of the local cottage industries here making cross-stitch and carpets. The main market for the cross-stitch being tourists. Brings quite a bit of income to the otherwise unemployed rural women.

You know that you really are in the middle of nowhere when can't even find these places on map.google.com. It's not until get to Kashgar tomorrow night appear back on the map...

Posted by Scott Walsh in China, ExportFacebook, Travelling at 15:15 | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0)