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on Friday, June 10, 2005 - 03:14 PM AST - 5256 Reads
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For the following weeks, you're invited to follow Jeremy through his Silk Road Journey. You can get the whole story on his blog.
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October 10th - 11:20pm
By Jeremy
My Upcoming Trip
Well, hello there! I see you have come to check out what the fuss is all about. It's like this : I'm going on a trip. A trip to travel a portion of the Silk Road in China. I won't be covering the whole thing, but a good portion of it.
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I'll be travelling alone for most of it. There will be one portion at the beginning where I'll have a guide during a four-day horse trip through the Heavenly Mountains near Urumqi, but the rest of it will be me and my stuff (plus a couple guidebooks). This trip also has no specified amount of time. I decided to do it this way so that If I find that I'm in a place and I'm really enjoying myself, and want to see more of the place, I can. I really don't like that aspect of travelling with a tour group. First of all, tour guides have to spend so much time herding people, that you get to spend less time actually doing things, if you don't like a place, you're stuck there, and if you do like a place, you can't stay and enjoy it as much as you'd like. So going it alone seemed like the best choice. A bit of thanks to Fidel for originally putting the idea into my head.
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I'll be keeping a log here as best I can while I'm on the trip. I have no idea how reliable internet access will be along the way, so I can't guarantee any regular updates, but I'll do my best. In any case, I'll be keeping a written log, and taking pictures, all of which I will eventually transfer here for your reading and viewing pleasure.
I'm quite excited to go. I haven't had an adventure like this in, well, a long time. During the trip, I have hopes to ride planes, trains, buses, horses, camels, donkey carts, and even an ancient-style snowboard (a slab of wood covered with horse skin). I hope to meet nomad families and stay in Yurts (huge round tents that they live in) with them. I'll be travelling over terrains such as mountains, islands, snow, desert, and probably a good deal of asphalt. I hope to see the western ends of the Great Wall, caves with thousands of buddhist paintings (as the Silk Road was also the route that brought buddhism to China from India), a Tibetan buddhist monastery, temples carved out of the the side of a cliff, and maybe a sheep's head boiling in soup.
I REALLY have to thank my dad for suggesting this to me, and for giving me so much advice and help in figuring out how to do it right. The travel agent we usually use here thought that "rugged" meant 3-star hotels instead of 4 or 5. Yeah, I know! My dad really helped by encouraging me to keep looking for ways to do this that would really give me an experience, not just a sight-seeing trip. My dad rocks.
A lot of different people will be reading this blog. Therefore, it may be the case that for some of you, I go into too much detail about certain things. For the Shanghaiexpat crowd, perhaps I'll linger too much on certain things about China. Perhaps for my friends back home, I'll spend too much time on things about me which they're already completely familiar with. But I'll do my best not to bore anyone. 
Here's a picture of what my current route plan looks like:
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- Urumqi, Xinjiang (乌鲁木齐, 新疆 )
This is
the capital of the XinJiang Uygur Autonomous region of China. Near here
are the Heavenly Mountains and Heavenly Lake, where I'll be taking my
4-day horse trip, and staying in the yurt(s) with Kazak (as in the
ethnicity from Kazakhstan) families.
- Turpan, Xinjiang (吐鲁番, 新疆)
A city
famous for being the hottest place in China, one time reaching 49.6 C
(121.4 F). It's pretty much accepted that the best grapes in China come
from here.
- Hami, XinJiang (哈密, 新疆)
In China, the name for cantaloupe is "Hami melon". Does that say something? If not, keep thinking.
- DunHuang, GanSu (敦煌,甘肃)
Important
spots here are the Crescent Moon Lake (a spring that just kind of
popped up in the desert in between two huge sand dunes), the Mogao
caves where there are tons of ancient buddhist wall paintings, and
Yumenguan, the *real* end of the Great Wall, though apparently, it's
just a pile of rubbish now, and you can only barely tell that it used
to be "Great".
- JiaYuGuan, GanSu (嘉峪关, 甘肃)
This is
westernmost point where the Great Wall was actually well-built, and
therefore considered the west end of the Great Wall by many.
- XiNing, Qinghai (西宁, 青海)
This is the
capitol of Qinghai Province. Near here is Qinghai Lake, the largest
lake in China, and also a saline lake. There's a place there called
Bird Island, where apparently thousands of bird go on their migrations
paths. But I've also read that that's seasonal. If there will be no
birds there, then I probably won't go. Birds make stuff interesting,
OK?
- XiaHe, GanSu (夏河, 甘肃)
The
thing I'm most interested in here is the Labrang Tibetan Monestary. How
can it be Tibetan if it's not in Tibet? Well, it's Tibetan Buddhism,
and apparently thousands of Tibetan monks come here to do their
prayers.
- LanZhou, GanSu ( 兰州,甘肃)
LanZhou is
the capitol of GanSu Province. Mainly, it's sort of the end of the Silk
Road (some people say it goes all the way to Xi'an, but I've been there
before, so decided not to include it on this trip). Here they have what
is called the "Thousand Buddha Caves", where lots of carvings of
buddhas and boddhisattvas have been carved into the faces of cliffs.
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Well, that's the plan. I hope to keep you all updated
frequently. Once again, I can't guarantee anything, but I'll do my best
while on the trip. When I get back, I'll be sure to put up whatever I
didn't have time for on the trip. Thanks for coming by and checking it
out!
Jeremy
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Episode 2: Arriving at Urumuqi
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