Turpan in Xinjiang, also known as the "Fiery Land", is the lowest basin in China and second lowest in the world, at 154m. It's the hottest city in China, reaching above 40C, and it came close whilst I was there reaching about 38C! Despite being in the middle of a desert, Turpan's streets are lines with bright trees and plants, with long streets arched with winding twisting grape vines. Turpan has many old villages, ruins, mosques and incredible dessert land surrounding it, which gave it a real sense of the traditional Silk Road China. Whilst there with Francesca, we did many of the sights around Turpan and spent time wondering the old streets and little villages.

The first day I decided I'd walk from the hotel to the bus station to meet Francesca, however with my wonderful map reading skills I took a number of wrong turnings and what should have been a 10 minute walk turned into a 2 and half hour walk. I eventually made it there, luckily Francesca's bus arrived much later than what I thought so she only had to wait around for 10 minutes in the end so it wasn't to much of a disaster, and I did get to see a lot of Turpan's new town. 

That evening we wondered the streets of the old town which was a 2 minute walk from our hotel. It was a lovely walk with long winding dirt roads lined with old clay buildings and walled in courtyards with large decorated wooden doors and gates. Many of the locals were walking to their local mosque for their evening prayers, and the children were all out playing on the streets now the temperature had cooled a little. It had a very friendly vibe with the smiley locals passing kind waves, the children shouting hello as we walked by and getting very excited when we said hi back, and neighbors out talking and helping each other.

Along our walk we were passed by many farmers with their motorbike trailers and many still using the traditional methods of their donkey and cart. As we walked further out the village we came into many vineyards where people were hard at work, and came across an old burial site with tombs and graves. Very different to those in Britain, the graves were long clay-mud cylinders on their side with the names of their buried written on using small pebbles set into the clay-mud. The tombs were small square buildings with domed rooftops and arched windows. On the way back we passed a small pen of baby goats. We were watching the goats and taking a few photos when the farmer came over and let us into the pen, he then handed us the baby goats, so we were very happy to get a cuddle. A few minutes down the road one of the farmers with a donkey cart stopped and gave us a lift back to the hotel on his donkey cart. So already with one evening in Turpan we had seen many beautiful old buildings and mosques, got many fantastic pics of the locals, had a walk through the vineyards, seen old tombs and graves, held baby goats and got a lift back on a donkey cart! A fantastic start to our little trip.

The next couple of days we had managed to get ourselves a driver who spoke really good English and who took us to all the local sights which we wanted to see. It was a very busy couple of days, but we saw heaps and experienced lots of local culture from learning a little of the local Uighur language to the tasty local foods and as we had our own driver we could stop whenever for quick captures of landscapes and villages which if we were on a bus we would have driven straight past.
 
Emin Minaret: Also known as Sugong Ta, Emin Minaret was founded in 1777. The minaret was made using the same dusty camel coloured clay-mud as the village on the road leading down to the minaret, and was surrounded by large vineyards as far as you could see. Unfortunately the Minaret is closed to tourists, however we could go inside the large prayer hall. The prayer hall had a large domed roof with many triangular openings to let the light in, and with its large wooden beams and the simple archways in the walls the shadows created and where the light hit created lovely patterns adding to the spiritual beauty of the prayer hall. Small rooms led to long corridors made up of arch after arch and little courtyards gave new views of the building and minaret. The Building itself was very simple with little details. What detail it did have was basic square wholes in walls, sleek curved rooftops, triangle openings and smooth walls, but the simple make up was what made it really pretty. Sometime simplicity really is best.

Flaming Mountains: These mountains surrounding the village of Tuyoq and the Bezeklik Caves, are named the Falming Mountains due to their layers of red, orange and yellow rock. With the mountains come many myths, the most well known being that the Monkey King created a disturbance in the heavens and knocked over a kiln, causing embers to fall from the sky, they landed creating the Flaming Mountains. In an Uighur legend, a child eating dragon lived in the Tianshan Mountains. A Uighur hero slayed the dragon and cut it into eight pieces. The dragon's blood was splashed all over mountain  giving it the red colour and the eight pieces became the eight valleys in the Flaming Mountains.

Tuyoq: Set in a green valley of the Flaming Mountains, this little oasis village is made up of traditional mud houses, mosques and raisin buildings. Walking through the village we were given locally grown dried mulberries, which were delicious, and sampled some of the traditional breads. The dusty village gave a glimpse of what traditional Uighur life is like, locals working hard with their community there was little outside influence, with people still washing their clothes in the streams, drying fruits and vegetables on the ground outside their homes and locals in their traditional dress.
 
Astana Tombs: The Astana Burial ground contains over 1000 tombs, however only 3 of the tombs were open to the public. The tombs are over 1500 years old, dating back from the late 200's to the early 700's. Within 2 of the open tombs, there was different burial paintings, within the first was a selections of people painted on the wall, the second contained paintings of different animals. In the third tomb lay two mummified bodies, so well preserved that you could see their teeth and nails still.  

Camel Riding: Before heading into the Bezeklik Caves we finally got our camel riding experience! After all, you can't go to a desert and not have a go on a camel. We each were given our own camel, and were then taken up a large mountain dune to be given an amazing view down the surrounding valleys of mountains, old ruins, sand dunes and desert land. The camel riding was amazing. We were on the camels for about 45 minutes and the whole time we couldn't stop smiling. Since we weren't told the camels names, we decided to name them, mine was Humphrey and Francesca called hers Bertie. So we had a fantastic time with Humphrey and Bertie, and they were surprisingly comfortable to ride. If your going to ride a camel, you should definitely do it properly by going to the desert, there's definitely something special about getting to ride a camel in the desert.

Bezeklik Thousand Buddha Caves: The Bezeklik Caves are a group of Buddhist caves dating from 400 to 1300 in the north-east of the Taklamakan Desert. There are 77 caves in the gorge, however only a selection are open to see. The caves were long rectangular spaces with arched ceilings. Each cave had a large mural painting of the Buddha on the wall facing the entrance, with the walls to the right and left covered in paintings of animals, Buddhas, figures of people including Indians, Persians and Europeans, and stretching landscapes. The caves get the name 'Thousand Buddha Caves' from the shear amount of Buddha paintings within the caves, it was not only the walls which displayed beautiful paintings, but the arched ceiling was covered in row after row of hundreds of little Buddhas. Some of the paintings were rather damaged, some had areas taken away by past explorers, and many paintings were faded and started to crumble away just from old age, but many were still remarkably clear and well preserved, and much was still very clear. The caves were definitely my favorite site along with the camel riding and Tuyoq Oasis village.  
 
Jiaohe Ancient Ruined City: Jiaohe is an ancient ruined town from the Han dynasty. It is one of the worlds largest, oldest and best preserved ancient cities, having been home to about 6500 people. From the top of a look out you could see the shear size of the place, and it was very impressive that so much has survived for so long. Alongside Jiaohe was a deep gorge filled with lush green trees and farmland, with the rising mountains in the background, in the opposite direction was flat desert land as far as you could see. I definitely felt like I was in the middle of the desert here.

Karez Wells: The Karez Wells are a 2000 year old irrigation system of hand dug underground channels that guide the melting snow from the nearby TianShan mountain range into Turpan and its surrounding farm land. The system itself is impressive, however the area we paid to get into, expecting to be able to go to to the wells, was a very Chinese tourist attraction. Along a one way system we were led under vine archways to a small museum with fantastic Chinglish translations and amusing little models of the constructions of the wells. We then followed a winding path down underground where small areas of the ground had a glass floor so you could see the running water. A bit disappointing to what we expected as when ever I mentioned I was going to Turpan, I would always be told to visit the wells, but at least we could tick another thing of the list of sights to see.

Grape Valley: The grapes of Turpan have the highest sugar content in the world of up to 26%, making them that bit extra yummy. All around Turpan is numerous vineyards and all the little villages have grape houses where they hang the grapes to dry. We didn't pay to go into the attraction site, as it was very similar to the lay out of the Karez Wells, so instead we sat surrounded by vines in a small restaurant at a traditional low table with cushions and carpets to sit on and had the traditional Uighur dish of rice with carrots and mutton, which was a much nicer atmosphere. I figured I couldn't go to the Grape Valley and not come back with some raisins, so after lunch we went for a walk up the market street trying many different varieties of raisins, each one really was sweeter than any other grapes you can find in other markets and shops.