Travis Hydzik's blog feeds

Xining, Qinghai to Lhasa, Tibet railway, China

Tue, 22 May 2012 03:21:36 GMT

From Xining we caught a train to Lhasa, Tibet province in China, we chose the hard-sleeper, and even though it was the most we had paid at 500 Yuan (plus 200 Yuan booking fee), it was the worst seats we had, with six bunks per room. Naturally, we were left with the middle beds that [...]

Qinghai Hu, Xining, China

Tue, 22 May 2012 03:21:36 GMT

Xining is located in the Qinghai province, a region on the north-eastern border of Tibet. We decided to spend some of our time in Qinghai exploring the outer areas, and I was drawn to the idea of visiting Qinghai Hu (Lake Kokonor) and in particular Niao Dao (or Bird Island), a breeding ground for wild [...]

Tian Chi (Heavenly Lake), Urumqi, China

Tue, 22 May 2012 03:21:36 GMT

Tian Chi, also known as Heavenly Lake, is located about 150km away from Urumqi in the Tian Shan mountain range and is a popular a day trip from the city. Regular buses leave at 9am from the People?s Park in Urumqi so on our first evening we purchased some tickets for 150 Yuan each for [...]

Urumqi, China

Tue, 22 May 2012 03:21:36 GMT

We caught a soft-sleeper train from Kashgar to Urumqi, a full day of travelling, as we had a room to ourselves the time went by fairly quickly. Urumqi is a large gateway city connecting Central Asia to China, we didn?t spend too much time in the city, but did enjoy the People?s Park with leafy [...]

Kashgar, China ? Livestock Market

Tue, 22 May 2012 03:21:36 GMT

It was Travis who was very keen on visiting Kashgar.� When faced with our dilemma leaving Kyrgyzstan, I suggested travelling straight to Urumqi and perhaps giving the inconveniently located Kashgar a miss (I?d heard the city was no longer quite the Silk Road trading hub it used to be due to massive Chinese development). That [...]

Kashgar food and Uyghur cuisine, China

Tue, 22 May 2012 03:21:36 GMT

One of the nice changes was the change in cuisine, Kashgar has a large number of Uyghurn people which influences the cuisine. Uyghurs are an ethnic minority group with the majority living in the south-western part of China. During our stay in Kashgar we ate Uyghurn food at traditional restaurant Intizar of Shou La Mian [...]

Kashgar (Kashi), China

Tue, 22 May 2012 03:21:36 GMT

Kashgar (or Kashi as we learnt when booking the airline tickets) is an important Silk Road city as it was the first major hub after travellers from China heading west had passed the hazardous Taklamakan Desert. Kashgar contains a mix of cultures, predominantly the Islamic Central Asian Uyghur people and more recently with new development [...]

Karakol, Kyrgyzstan to Kashgar, China

Tue, 22 May 2012 03:21:36 GMT

We left Karakol intending to spend the day travelling to Sary Tash, a border town roughly 100km from the Kyrgyzstan/China border, a 950km route that we thought would take approximately twelve hours. We made a few poor judgments, first we left too late, at around 9am from Karakol, we then had trouble finding transport from [...]

Altyn Arashan, Kyrgyzstan

Tue, 22 May 2012 03:21:36 GMT

We awoke early the next morning and set off on our hike, taking a mashrutka (number 305) as far as we could, to a place called Ak-Suu Sanatorium, where the mashrutka dropped us off on a track sixteen kilometres from Altyn Arashan. We had some gear with us, as we planned to stay overnight, so [...]

Karakol, Kyrgyzstan

Tue, 22 May 2012 03:21:36 GMT

After spending a few relaxing days wandering around Bishkek we travelled toward the Lake Issy Kol region, east of the capital.� As we had arrived slightly early season-wise, many attractions such as the lake Song Kol were still frozen over.� However, Lake Issy Kol, the second largest alpine lake in the world, doesn?t freeze (due [...]