Today starts with another ancient cits. Kocho is the name of it for the people here, the chinese call it Gaochang. Very similar to the city yesterday but at least there are donkey cars so we don't have to walk in the heat.
Also the history of this city is not written down by the locals, the only written documents are done by the chinese. Founded in the 1st century b.c. from who ever (it's not really clear). From time to time Han Chinese people were living there, then the Liang, some times the Rouran, not to forget the Gauche. Wasn't that easy to follow all the data in the heat.
The ride on the donkey car was great. Stephan was thinking about bringing one of the cars including donkey to Suzhou for the daily ride to the office.
And again plenty of ruins. Temples, living houses, schools, municipal, toilet, everything you need in a city with 20.000 people.
It's hard to miss the main temple, it's the biggest building in the area. The donkey car couldn't go directly there so we had to walk some hundred meters which is really swatting work in a temperature around 48°C.
Back on the donkey car it felt much better and after 2 hours we've seen enough. It's just the beginning of the day.
Before we continued the journey we filled up our water stock. All the water bottles you can buy are frozen which gives you at least the first 15 minutes the feeling of refreshment. Next stop were the flaming mountains, 100km long, 500 meters high and a lot of stories about them.
The uygur tale is that there was a dragon living in the mountains. This bad creature ate the children of the people, so an uygur hero went to the dragon and killed it. After that the hero sliced the Dragon down to 8 pieces which are nowadays the valleys. Out of the blood of the dragon the mountains grow. Hmm sounds not really real.....
The chinese saga is a little bit different: the pilgrim monk Xuanzang was on his way to India but couldn't go further because of these mountains which were really burning. Lucky him his buddy Sun Wukong, the monkey king was with him. He "organized" the magic fan from the ice princess and froze the flames, so they could proceed with their journey. This tale called "journey to the west" is in china at least so popular like Grimms tales in Europe.
We recognized that we're still in the desert. In the valleys of the flaming mountains is the hottest point in China, more than 60°C air temperature and the ground is heating up to more than 80°C. That's a bit more than we like.....
And on we go to Bezeklik. If the locals are telling you this name it sounds like snoozing. But were not here because of the name but for the Buddhist paintings in the caves. These frescoes are dated to the 5th - 9th century and worth a visit. No worries about the sign, it's ok to take a look into most of the caves.
We always had in mind cave painting is something done with a coal stick directly to the rock. Well, in Bezeklik are 83 caves and out of them around 40 are decorated with frescoes. all the caves are brick layed inside and it's absolutely forbidden to take photographs.
Most of the frescoes were hammered away from the walls during the early 20th century by a Gentleman called Albert von Le Coq. He brought the frescoes part by part to the museum in Berlin where most of the parts were destroyed during world war II. What remained in Bezeklik was modified in the 60s by moslemic red gardists, means they cut out the eyes. The small part which is left over is quite impressing anyway. Buddhas with mustaches we haven't found somewhere else yet.
Already lunch time, that morning was really flying by. Back in Turpan we made some rest and had lunch. Next to the restaurant we found two really typically vehicles for the area. A chinese motorbike with a Yamaha cover and a Santana with the VW sign on th hood.....
After the rest we headed to the "grape valley". A whole valley full of grape farms, raisins and also some wine. The raisins of Turpan are quite famous and really delicious. Some other people heard also about the grapes so we weren't alone there.
A big tourist information center was build a couple of years ago with a lot of nice access balconies and for sure the omnipresent signs.
A big drawing shows which kind of grapes are grown around the world. E.g. the Cabert Sauvigon in the UK. Well at least the right direction. If you ever tasted chinese wine can be sure that there wont be any competition in the near future. Nice is also the clock with the writing "tempus fugit" on it. Maybe they forgot about the full sentence, "tempus fugit, amor manet"......
Having the opportunity to take real tourist pictures we tried our best. Stephan really gave his best to imitate the original countenance of a typical tourist.
Did we already mention the signs? A small collection we put to the right side of this page. It shows pretty nice, how mature the gouvernment thinks the people are.
Before we left we bought 2 Kg raisins. There are at least 20 different sorts of them in different quality levels. And promised, these are the best raisins we ever tasted.
Back to Ürümqi we had a last view to the mountains *sigh*
Tomorrow we already leave for Suzhou, but before that we'll visit the heavenly lake, but as always, this is a completely different story......
Signs...
...always worth to look at......
