Canuck visits Turpan, ancient silk-road city!

Jane, my wife, and I just returned from Turpan, (Tulufan), and here is the first

of two parts describing the trip and other interesting happenings.

Hope you enjoy it!

Just to the south-east of Urumqi, the capital city of the Xinjiang Autonomous Region, lies an ancient city, Turpan or Tulufan, a city of 200,000 people in the deep Turpan Basin. I just returned from visiting this place. It lies in a deep bowl-shaped depression surrounded on 4 sides by mountains. In fact, the railroad

, the only rail access to Xinjiang Aut. Reg. preferred to stay out of this deep

bowl and is situated about 60 kms away so as not to have to enter and then climb

back out of this geographical feature. Just to the south lies the second lowest

place on earth, -154 metres below sea-level.

We, my wife Jane and I, were driven from our home in Dushanzi to Urumqi by a friend who just happened to have business to conduct in the capital. He left us at

the bus-station and we rode onward, another 3 hours, to Turpan that evening.

There are always crowds of taxi drivers and others around bus and train stations

as people exit, shouting at travellers to use their service be it tour-guide, taxi, hotel, etc. We have learned to ignore them and walk away from the area before hailing a taxi or looking for a hostel, hotel, restaurant or taxi. After checking room prices in several hotels we chose a modest place for 100rmb and left

out backpacks there to find a place to eat dinner. The clerk in the hotel reception area asked us if we cared to join her for dinner and we accepted. She took

us to a night-market where we ate noodles and she played with her 4 year old cousin, a bright and happy little girl.

The next morning Jane spoke to a guide near the post office and agreed to pay 180 rmb for his services as guide in his air-conditioned Santana car for the whole

day. Our first stop was the ancient underground water-canal system which has just been opened for public viewing after being restricted to only scientific exploration, the Karez System. A mountain nearby blocks the flow of surface water from the snow-mountains but water was discovered flowing below the surface. A series of hundreds of wells were hand-dug down to this flowing water and then horizontal tunnels were excavated between wells. These underground canals were created to keep the water from evaporating had it been brought to the surface. With this water for irrigation, Turpan was able to grow the grapes that have made this

area famous for many thousands of years. There is a very long frost-free climate here with a very hot sun (47 degree C. record once) and cool desert nights, perfect for grapes. The extreme dryness of the desert allows for fast drying of

grapes in special drying houses producing sweet and famous raisins which are exported over the world, first along the ancient silk-road and now by air and rail

.

Our next stop was a location for "0" metres altitude. In fact it was just a tourist site since any seashore could be called the same thing but for the fact that

there is no sea anywhere close to Turpan. An interesting fact being exploited

was, "get your blood-pressure tested here", since it will be the most accurate here at sea-level... 5 rmb ... :-)

Next stop was the location of 1000 Buddhist grottos, the Bizaklick Thousand Buddha Caves. Dug into the clay walls of this river valley are ancient grottos, shrines and living quarters for the monks who brought Buddhism into China. The grottos once had ancient figures and wall paintings but these were chiselled off the walls by German explorers and taken to Berlin where they were destroyed during

W.W.1. There is nothing much left to see but photos and badly scratched walls in cool caves dug into the cliff-sides.

... continued in part 2