The next day, we went back to the Bezeklik. This time, we got rides from local vans leaving from Turpan’s bazaar, heading to the general area called Shengjin, an irrigated valley that drained into the canyon where the Bezeklik caves were. It was in this area that the mummies and the world’s oldest drug dealer …
The sun was beating down on us. We walked the half mile down the road to where the Bezeklik Caves compound was. Caves is not an accurate way of describing Bezeklik. Bezeklik is actually a series of man-made grottos carved into the side of a tall cliffface above a small river. The Mutou river runs …
Saw this sign in Turpan.
I was satisfied with biking out to the Ruins of Jiaohe and the Emin Minaret, but we really wanted to get back to hitchhiking. We took a bus out to the rural town near the Bezeklik Caves, Erbaoxiang, or Second Fortress Village. After a forty minute, twenty plus mile ride across the desert, past the …
All of the guidebooks mentioned Emin Minaret. The tower was built in 1777 and finished in 1778. Its construction was blessed by the Qing Dynasty’s Qianlong Emperor to honor Emin Khoja, a local ruler and general who had teamed up with the Qianlong Emperor, though the details of their collaboration were always left vague. I …
I’ll be giving a presentation on some of our trip at UGA’s Tate Reception Hall in the Tate Student Center tomorrow, Thursday, September 4th at lunch, from 12-1. If you are in Athens, stop by.
The afternoon was hot. It was easily over a hundred degrees. We were in the dry, Turpan depression, near the second lowest point on Earth. My idea to bike to and back from the Jiaohe Ruins had seemed like a better idea earlier in the morning. Now, after two and a half hours wandering around …
We were able to get rinky-dink bikes and make our way out of Kashgar. It was not hitchhiking, but it was an unconventional means of transportation, and it gave us a chance to meet people and get a feel for the countryside along the six mile stretch between the city and the ruins of Jiaohe. …
Here are some pics of Galen riding a camel in the area around Turpan. They tried to upsell us on services. We paid $1.50 USD for a two hundred foot ride, but they took Galen around a thousand feet. They wanted to have us pay $5USD to do an hour long trek up into the …
I entered the museum’s exhibit hall. The air was quiet and the entrance dark. The sensation was not normal for China. It felt like I was entering a church, somewhere holy and slightly frightening. Inside the first exhibit, the rumpled body of a man lay on a wooden bed, his legs folded up, a white …