The Most Beautiful Place in the World?

For the last five days, I was on the most beautiful trip of my life with a bunch of the people that I am studying with at Dalian University of Technology.  Every year when a different group of people study in China through Clemson, a mid-break trip is planned for all of the students and teachers to enjoy.  This year, we headed out to Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous region—the largest province in China.  It is located in the northeastern part of the country, so it was about a 4 hour plane ride from where we go to school in Dalian.

The first place that we arrived at on our trip is Urumqi.  Let me just say, I never thought that life could be anymore different than the places that I have been to in China prior to this mid-break trip.  I thought that I successfully made it through culture shock and was well on my way to feeling completely comfortable in a foreign environment.  Well, I was wrong.  While being in a foreign country like China, it is a normal thing to be stared at while walking around.  Places like Dalian don’t get to see too many Americans, but they do see people from other parts of the world because of the college and its convenient location.  However, the place that we first arrived at on this mid-break trip was an entirely new experience.



The first thing that I noticed while driving from the airport to our hotel is the language spoken.  Most of the province is made up of the Islamic religion, and is also bordered by all of the Stan countries such as Kazakhstan, Afghanistan, Tajikistan, etc.  Accordingly, there is a large amount of people in the area that speak Arabic language.  Mostly all of the signs seen in this area have the Chinese symbol, and also the Arabic writing under them.  We pretty much flew out to a completely new country. 

We did a couple of activities in this area, like walk through the market streets (which I didn’t think I’d make it out of alive), attend a great performance arts show (which I got to dance in front of about 1000 foreigners!), and just stay at a very interesting hotel.  We only stayed in this area for about half a day and one night, so there wasn’t too much time to do anything.  However, I experienced culture shock for the first time.  I was absolutely worn out after only being in this place for a couple of hours!



I'm not even sure if this is Arabic.  It sure looks like it, though.  Most signs had both Arabic and Chinese symbols.



  

I did not see this Sheep get killed, but i did see it get skinned on the street in front of a lot of people.  It didn't even phase these people.  Later, we saw another sheep get killed in this street.
  

When walking around the market street after we first got there, we got what seemed like the death stare by everyone that we passed by, and people that we were about to pass 100 feet down the road.  We might as well have been Aliens standing on a huge stage with a spotlight on us.  Talk about uncomfortable.  We got mean mugged to the max.  Groups of people stared at us like you wouldn’t believe.  They would lock eyes on us until we were too far away to be seen.  We even got followed by some people.  I’ve never felt so unsafe, but I’ve also never felt so excited. 

For the rest of the trip, I’m pretty sure that I saw some of the most beautiful natural landscapes that I will see for a very long time.  We first headed out to this place called “Heavenly Lake”.  Wow.  This place was incredible.  It was about a four hour drive to get to the National Park (I’m not sure if it is a National Park or not, but it should be, and we had to enter through a building to access the huge park), and then about an hour ride once inside the park.  We were in a huge tour bus and went through extremely windy roads to get to the main attraction, the Heavenly Lake.  The lake is around 7,000 feet above ground and is filled up by the ice that melts off of the mountains surrounding it.  The water was the prettiest natural color I have ever seen.  It had a greenish-blue color to it and was clear and very fresh looking.  While at the park, I was able to go down and fill my big water bottle up with some of the Heavenly Lake water.  I drank it all the next day before heading out to the desert.



Breath-taking!  It looked even better in person, as expected.



The view from down at the bottom.  It cost about 7 dollars to go on a boat ride in the lake.  We went on one and saw some amazing views.  My camera died before the ride, so I was able to take it all in and not worry about pictures!



My experience at the Heavenly Lake area was blissful.  Everywhere I looked, and everywhere I explored was just amazing.  We arrived at this mountainous region at around 12:00 PM, and were exploring all of the way until 10:30 at night (there is only one time zone in China, so the west stays bright out very late).  At around 10:00 PM, James and I snuck down the mountain that our Yurts were on and even took a dip in the Heavenly Lake.  It was so great.  I miss the place.  We were all alone out in nature with no one hours away from us except for people in the little Yurt Villages that were few and far between in the area.  While we were in the park, we took a boat ride on the lake, hiked up the steepest mountain of my life (and accordingly the scariest), saw the most stunning waterfalls of my life, swam in the freshest water I’ve ever seen or tasted, and slept amongst animals that left poop droppings all around the area that were the size of large softballs.  Oh, I almost forgot, we also got to see a night sky that was completely lit up and absolutely covered by stars.  I don’t know if I will be at a more amazing place than this for a long time, but I sure hope that I will be!



Standing directly outside our Yurt.  It's about 9:30 at night in this picture.  James and I just came back from a huge hike and are about to go down to the Heavenly Lake for a swim.



Yurt living at it's finest!



We saw thousands of Windmills on the way to the Desert!



The next morning we got up around 7:00 and left at 8:00.  When you are in such a beautiful area like this--waking up to snow capped mountains and turquoise blue water--it is hard to start the day off without a huge smile on your face.  I walked out of the Yurt, looked to my left, and quickly remembered were I was at and how blessed I was/am to be in such a place.  Alright, so we left the Heavenly Lake area and headed out to the desert.  I am not going to talk about this that much at all.  It was no doubt an amazing experience, but what all can be said about the desert?  I will post some pictures of our two days in the desert, and try and explain some of the two days by putting captions under the pictures.  We had such an unbelievable time in the desert. 



About 7,000 people used to live in this ancient city that was carved through the desert rock.



On the following day, we rode through another ancient city, while being pulled by a donkey.  The town that set up this tourist attraction was extremely poor.  I felt a bit sad during the ride.



We got to ride Camels through the desert one day!  This poor Camel had a limp hump.  Notice how I was holding it up in the picture ha.  The Camel ride was quite the experience.  It took me up a huge hill to get to the spot in the picture.  It farted and pooped the entire way haha



We drove about an hour from the Camel riding out to another part of the desert.  The hike to where that guy is standing at the top of that hill was absolutely brutal.  The sand was over 150 degrees, very soft, and I had Crocs on.  The hot sand got trapped in my Crocs every step of the way and I had to empty them out nearly every step. 



This is the view looking inward at the Desert.  The tour guide told us that the Gobi Desert is the second largest in the world.  It sure was hot!  to the left of me, which is out of the picture, is the dune that we hiked up. 



It’s now back to school for me and the rest of the Clemson group.  We all had the time of our lives on the trip, and are still having the times of our lives now, except studying in between.  While on the trip out west, I became aware of what an opportunity it has been for us to be in the area that we were at.  If I did not have three fluent Mandarin speakers on the trip with me, none of that 5 day trip would have happened.  Without that crucial link in the group, a lot of things would not have been possible on this trip.  I did not see one American, or even anyone outside of Asian descent while on the trip except for my group.  What an opportunity.