The real reason for coming to Xinjiang. This was the experience I was expecting; sandy landscape, dry heat, blue skies and the feeling you're not in
Central Government wants to lure Chinese tourists to this province and has started by building expensive ticketing machines and charging a high entry fee to cover the costs. If they were able to cover up the mountains and charge for taking the cover off, they would do it - this is not far fetched when you consider what they've actually done: for example, tour buses for the 'flaming mountains' attraction must enter a sunken parking lot surrounded by two metre high boards obscuring the scenery; the tourists must then pay to exit this enclosed space through a turnstile to see the same scenery that was already visible before entering the parking lot. Needless to say none of us wanted to pay (would anyone?), so we drove out of the parking lot and stopped on the desert road a few metres ahead and looked for free.
Apart from the forced attractions there were a few genuinely interesting ones such as an Afghan style mosque and Tuyok, a traditional Uyghur town. The two thousand (or so) year old town that is now more or less a melted mud city with barely recognisable streets and buildings was less appealing as was their underground irrigation attraction - maybe fibre glass models of people building tunnels just don't do it for me.
We tried to round the day off with some interesting Urghur food, however the two dishes that were recommended, spaghetti in oil and spaghetti cut into small pieces in oil, didn't really satisfy so we ended up eating more Chinese; just as oily but more interesting. Since Turpan is famous for its grapes we thought we'd sample the wine, but unfortunately it turned out to be as drinkable as the Urghur food was interesting. It's probably a real art to make food this tasteless and on the plane they brought it to a new level; or maybe we were put off by the guy on our left who was determined to fill three sick bags full of spit.
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