Urumqi and the Kyrgyz visa

The capital of Xinjiang province, Urumqi, is quite like any other big Chinese city, the main difference being that a considerable part of the population consists of ethnic minorities: Uyghurs, Hui, Kazachs and Kyrgyz.

The highrise, smoke-stacked itself isn't very inviting and even with placates in the People's Park advocating its beauty, it is an alltogether depressing place.

However, we found a very nice hostel on the advice of Jenny, a very friendly Chinese girl we met on the train from Dunhuang. Maitian International Youth Hostel, cheap accomodation and an open travellers' atmosphere; a good place to relax for a few days. Here we met Francois, a French teacher who gave us valuable information on crossing the Kyrgyz border, and Samantha, a nice English student who travels across Xinjiang after working at the Beijing Olympics.

The best thing about Urumqi is that we got our Kyrgyz visas: the small consulate hidden away not too far from the hostel was able to provide these in three days, be it at a high rate: a hefty 952RMB.. But with this, we'll be in Kashgar by the end of this week, meaning we'll just on schedule for the Sunday Market, which is supposed to be one of the most interesting ones in Asia.. Our expectations are running high on that market event: the ones we saw so far in China have been quite an experience as well, with all kinds of animals being sold: chickens, crabs, fish, frogs, turtoises, birds and squid. Add some colourful vegetable and fruits stalls and fragrant spices, and there you have your average Chinese market.

Tomorrow, we leave for Kasgar in the far end of Xinjiang province, near Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Pakistan. We managed to get us two sleepers, after queueing for ages in a packed train station (actually, Floris queued, Hanna judging herself to be still too weak to face the crowds). It's a 24 hour ride, but we have quite comfortable lower berths and a table for playing cards (if we can agree on the rules, that is).

After these two weeks of rushing through China, we will lower our pace and hopefully won't be doing too much overnight travelling anymore. When we leave China, we will have covered roughly one third of our total mileage. So far (up to Urumqi), we have spent about 54 hours, or 4300 km, on trains...