"The Mysterious Xinjiang -- I love it." Top 5 Page for this destination Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Province by yirutang

My dream was to travel the whole world, not in once but one place after another and take my time. Before that, I hope I could explorer the entire China. Thankfully, I managed to went to places before they became tourism prosperous, like my trip to Yunnan in 1999 and my trip to Xinjiang in 2005.

Because Xinjiang is remote even in minds of us eastern side Chinese, we book a private tour instead of plan the trip on our own. Booking a tour has its pros and cons. The schedule is usually too tight for us to really sit down and study the place, on the other hand, you run low risk of ruining the trip and are safe not to miss something important. The guide themselves are locals so talking to them itself is a fun experience. In China, labor is so cheap so having a guide for a group of 4 of us doesn't cost much at all.

Our trip is devided into two parts. The visit to Xinjiang Uygur province and the visit to the old silk road includes Dunhuang, Lanzhou and usually Xi'an. We didn't have time to visit Xi'an this time because of my vacation is too short. :(

Both Xinjiang and my hometown Suzhou has thousands of years of history but they are so different. Suzhou sits in the abdomon of Han China and it is single streamed and pure. Xinjiang on the other hand was right in the middle point of between eastern asia, turkestan and probably tabet boddism. The name of "Xinjiang" means "New Frontier" in Chinese. Wars are constantly going on there, different nations with different religions face by face eath other.

The major religion in Xinjiang is Muselim although there are also a lot of Han Chinese and Mongolian people (who believe in Tabet Buddism). The history of Xinjiang is too complicated to be presented in this blog, I found this link explained it good (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xinjiang#A_succession_of_peoples).

The most important geographic entity is Tian Shan mountain. It is a moutain that affects the weather of Xinjiang. It also devides Xinjiang into the northern and the southern part. Generally speaking the northern part is more prosperous and is with a more mixed combination of people. The southern part consists mainly the Uyghur people.

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Xinjiang is so big and you can hardly get it all. The places I have **missed** in Xinjiang are:

- Kanas Lake and Muhe : Beautiful but it is in the very north of Xinjiang. In order to get there, 1-2 day's of driving is needed, so we gave it up and choose Yili instead.

- Nalati grass land in Yili. It should be a very nice grass land on hill. Quite different from Bayinbluk. But we didn't have the time for it as well.

-The southern Xinjiang, mainly the city of Kashgar. You can experience more of the real culture of the Uygur people. However because of the Han and Uighur tension, it is not a recommended place for us to go.

Lanzhou, Jiayu Guan Gate and Lanzhou. Please see my Dun Huang page for details.

• In a nutshell:Go visit the place before it becomes popluar!