Irkutsk, Siberia: Short Stay In A Whatever Townby Randi / July 9, 2017
After three weeks of exhausting, nonstop activity in our big summer travels, we planned for four days of just pure relaxation in a presumed idyllic spot, Olkhon Island on the famed Lake Baikal, a tiny fishing village that is hard to reach and so we simultaneously assumed two incongruous thoughts: 1) that we would be two of very very few visitors (pretty true) but 2) that even so the island and village would be equipped to deal with visitors (hahah no). Can’t have it both ways. Really, parts of the island, like the lake itself and the cliffs and rocky terrain along the northern parts of the island, are beautiful, but getting there and for the most part being there is too stressful to allow for any relaxation, or, honestly, to allow me to recommend a trip here.
it’s like a little baby Azure Window! Oh Azure Window, RIP! (read the Malta posts on the main Travel page)
Through the Hostel Baikaler in Irkutsk, we booked a trip to Olkhon Island up on Lake Baikal. Most people in Irkutsk are indeed stopping there in order to venture out to the lake, which is the biggest freshwater lake in the world. The guidebook says that if all the other freshwater in the world disappeared, Baikal would be able to fill our needs for forty years. That’s a big ass lake. So the Baikaler people booked us a minibus ride to Olkhon and a 3 night stay at Olga’s Guesthouse in Khuzir, the tiny ‘town’ on Olkhon. When I say to you to never, ever use Baikaler or Olga’s people to book anything, I really, really mean it.
The best thing I saw all that day of the 8 hour minibus – our only big toilet stop
My view for an entire day – this was the best road we took. SO BUMPY
The minibus seemed nice enough, one of the nicer vehicles we’ve seen, and since we were picked up at our hostel early we got the first row which I figured would help with my carsickness (the van fit about 16 people). I was so funny thinking anything could stop the nausea on this ride, even if you aren’t prone to it. After we left, at about 9:05, we picked up a few more travelers at another hostel, before we set off and…nope, we just parked in a busy market square one block from our hostel at 9:15, the driver got off, and I watched as he joined apparent friends to smoke in the middle of the market. At 10:30 (that’s right), he got back on the bus, and we thought jesus christ are we finally leaving, an hour and a half late? Nopeeee, he drove around while on his phone yelling at people until we found 4 other people to pick up outside a stadium. I mean. WTF. I thought okay NOW we’re leaving and it’ll be fine. Little did I know.
The roads on Olkhon
After just under two hours, we stopped for a bathroom break, which is the best kind of break you can ever offer me. Five minutes later, we drove down the road to stop for lunch. It sucked that our two stops in a 7 hour bus journey were back to back; I was so nervous about having to pee, I was having palpitations. When we left the cafe in the middle of nowhere on the side of a dirt road, the real ridiculousness of our journey started. The road to Olkhon Island is not equipped for people to drive on. There aren’t roads, really, it’s just land. And we were not in a jeep or a landrover, we were in a minibus and pretty much off-roading. We felt every jarring bump and throw from the rocky paths that turned into sand dunes that you had to carefully maneuver and then back into rocky again. It was INSANE. We were all looking at each other like ‘oh my god this cannot be the way’, holding on for dear life to the handles above us or on the seats in front of us. It was like being on a roller coaster that also shook your seat violently and spun you around. I’m nauseous just remembering it. Of course that part of the trip was about 2 hours. It was the worst travel experience ever, until the return journey three days later, which was actually worse.
The town of Khuzir (after a terrible rainstorm, hence the road is a pond)
One of the two main grocery stores in Khuzir/Olkhon
When we finally got to Olga’s Guesthouse in Khuzir, it was not the fresh sigh of relief we were counting on. It was a few lackluster wooden shacks, and our room was a small, dank, windowless affair with two college dorm beds with ugly, not very clean looking bedding on them. Windowless was the worst part. We told the staffer that her colleagues who had arranged this for us months ago promised that we would be in a building with a bathroom inside it (I pee at least every 90 minutes and I cannot be walking to another building in the middle of the night that often). The staffer was like, um no none of the buildings have bathrooms, here is our bathroom — two outhouse stalls about a full minute’s walk up the road of the grounds. (One was a western toilet; the other was a beginning-of-Slumdog-style-elevated wooden floor with a hole in it. When I talk about outhouses from here on out (and I’m sure I will), I mean this latter kind.) The sinks were halfway back down the little road. I mean. No. Your colleagues told us you had a bathroom in our building, and that was literally the only reason we booked with you instead of elsewhere, and we told them that at booking, that it was dependent on that! She was just like well nope we don’t have a bathroom so that’s it. We got our stuff from our jail cell of a windowless room and hightailed it out of that shithole. Luckily, we hadn’t paid yet, and luckily the staffer I guess heard from the colleague who made all the false promises (lies, they are called lies) and gave us our deposit back. We walked about 30 minutes in the sand dunes (omg it was so hard I’ve never been that sweaty before it’s like I had some sort of fever) up the road to Hotel Baikal View. It looked like a little string of colorful motel rooms, little log cabins in three rows, but they were so much better than motel rooms and the hotel itself was that sigh of relief we needed. The bed was the most comfortable in the entire country so far, and they had a bar, and a restaurant, and lots of staffers who spoke English and there was a POOL and a SAUNA and omg it was just great. And still much cheaper than the equivalent would be in the west.
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Our multi-colored string of hotel rooms! So cute
I loved that bed. It had clean white sheets and a big fluffy white comforter. The best. And every single room had its own bathroom. I was so happy that I didn’t have to put shoes and a headlamp on in the middle of the night to pee, I didn’t even care that the cabins were full of bugs (log cabins on a lake, man!), I didn’t even care that it was too cold to swim in the pool (we did jump in after our daily sauna use though, which was bracing but amazing hot damn I love saunas), I didn’t even care that housekeeping threw out my retainer/night guard and I’ve been grinding my teeth like crazy every since. (Okay, that’s not true, I cared a lot and cried but once a one-inch piece of clear plastic is gone, it’s gone. Fuckers.) I did love that sauna, hoo boy. And our first night, all night, was the hardest rainstorm I’ve maybe ever heard. I couldn’t sleep for a few hours because I thought our cabin was going to blow away, or at least flood quickly and completely. It was unbelievable. Can you imagine if we had stayed at Olga’s and I had to go out in that to trek to the outhouse in my boots and raingear and headlamp in the pitch black five times in the night??? Thank god we left. I’m so grateful to Z money for that one. I mean he didn’t want to stay at Olga’s either, he’s not a filthy monster, but yay for finding a nice place.
We ate a few times in the restaurant at Baikal View, because it was about a mile on the sand dunes to the ‘town’ of Khuzir and we were usually so tired from our day of exploring that we didn’t feel like trekking there and back (there’s like one taxi and you have to either be very lucky and find him randomly or get someone to call him, and it usually takes like 20 minutes for him to come anyway so no). The restaurant was fine, full of all the Baikal specialties husband was supposed to get. It was harder for me, but they had a really good pickle plate and good potato dishes (I say that like I’m not just talking about French fries and potato wedges). We also tried this weird kind of pickled mushroom that was interesting. I know the deathly gray color is unappetizing but they were decent.
oh I’ll have my usual thanks I guess |
like the most colorless plate of food ever |
Then, one night, the waitress was the first one (they all only spoke Russian) who understood really what kinds of things I was looking for and tried to help me get something that wasn’t just pickles and potatoes. She said what about this soup, otroshka? I had read about that soup before, and knew that it was cucumber, potato, egg, meat, sour cream, and kvass, that beer-like soda-ish dark bready drink that I for some reason like. She said this version was vegetarian, and they could do it without the egg and sour cream. I was skeptical but excited to have a soup. Lol again.
my kvass soup I can’t believe I ate this for dinner lolol
It was literally chopped up cucumber, potato, and a shittonne of spicy radish in a bowl of cold kvass. I mean. What. We were CRACKING up. It was…not bad, but it was incredibly strange and like WHAT. Imagine cold chopped veggies served in a bowl of undiluted, unadulterated soda, that’s what it was. I mean I ate it. It was still raw veggies. I still can’t get over it. I think the waitresses were laughing at me, having dared each other to see who could get the weird Americans to eat the craziest thing. I said to Husband that it’s usually with sour cream and egg and maybe that makes it less like a soda bath of cucumber and he said actually that sounds like it would be even stranger, and truly revolting. I guess the idea of soda and sour cream and egg mixed into a broth really is disgusting oh man alive Russia.
literally main street Khuzir
We did eat several meals in Khuzir, too. There were a lot of fish shacks, and a lot of small cafes, and a few decent ramshackle places with some things I could pick out. We went twice to this hopping cafe on the main drag (the name of it was just its address, and there’s like one street, so just like…it’s there) that had salads in a glass case (not refrigerated…I am living dangerously) and so I picked out a cabbage-y cucumber-y looking salad and another carrot-yuba salad! I had that yuba salad twice at this place, I was so happy to find it again, my favorite dish of Siberia. I really hope this yuba looking stuff I keep finding in Siberia (also had some in Yekaterinburg) really is tofu skin and not just some weird part of a fish (or worse) that I’ve just never seen before. That would be bad, and embarrassing. Let’s say it’s yuba before my stomach starts to hurt.
I love that this carrot-yuba salad was everywhere in Siberia!
We also went to Kafe Olkhon on you guessed it the main drag, which I really liked the look of. It was a proper old dark wooden pub-sort of place, full of Russian people and travelers. They had a menu with pictures and some English translations, and I got a giant plate of plain kasha (love it, I’m sorry) and a carrot-cabbage salad. It was a great meal for me if totally boring and plain to everyone else. I love that kind of meal.
There were a few sad grocery stores in the town, one less sad that had a few fun chocolate treats we found. That less sad store also had a fellow customer wearing the best shirt I’ve ever seen. I tried to get a picture of her without being too obvious but I failed. Anyway, the shirt was red and in white block letters it said “Puberty Silent’. WHAT. IS. WHAT. We’ve seen the most incredible tee shirts with things in English written on them. I guess this is how Chinese people feel when they see the nonsense character-tattoos of westerners.
ate the entire bag of chocolate-strawberry things on the walk home. should have gotten two of them. yummm
Wandering through the dirt roads once with new French friends we met, we passed a house that had a ‘homemade bread’ sign out front. So we rang the doorbell , it started to pour, and the lady came out to the gate, in that order. We said ‘you have bread?” and she said yes how many? and we said um, I guess two? and she came out with two enormous loaves of bread. like, enormous. 50 rubles each, so pretty cheap. We were cracking up. She didn’t even let us in, we just bought bread from a random lady at her house on the side of the road. It was hilarious. Almost as funny as trying to break into that bread itself, which took not joking all of my strength to break apart. Inside, it was really nice and fluffy, delicious really, but that outer shell was f-ing armor.
“homemade bread” |
the bread lady’s house. she didn’t let us in |
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Okay, that’s enough about the food!
Olkhon itself is interesting. The town of Khuzir (and, consequently, the entirety of the surroundings for miles and miles considering Khuzir is the most built up touristed part, despite it being literally two dirt roads) is not really ready for tourists, at least not a lot of them. It doesn’t not have the infrastructure to support tourism. Does it even have infrastructure? That bus ride, I’m not exaggerating, it was horrendous. We really can’t recommend going to Olkhon because this ride was so hellish and it takes up two entire days. It’s just not worth it. Once there, the guesthouses all seem to be like Olga’s and the very famous Nikita’s, complexes of small wooden shacks with shared outhouses (oh p.s., the entire island except for our hotel was outhouses. The restaurants too – you were lucky if the restaurant you chose even had a key to the nearest outhouse shack down the block. It’s fine when traveling (used to it by now) but like not in the place you’re staying for days). (Nikita’s charges hourly for wifi, so glad we didn’t book there.) It’s cool to be at a place that is so remote and raw, but it really cannot handle the tourist trade in its current state. It’s a shame because parts of the island are beautiful, but I just don’t know how people can really go to see them. There is a hydrofoil boat that might go once or twice a week, saving most of the minibus ride, but then even getting around the island for the tours (which is the most important and best thing to do on the island; you’re not there to stay in the ‘town’) requires driving in minibuses on the same and even worse roads! The entire day! It’s just a mess there.
the roads we drove on for like a whole week
Let’s talk about those tours. We booked a tour of the north cape of the island, called Cape Khoboy, with our hotel. Every hostel or hotel books the same tour, with the same sort of driver and Soviet military-looking 9-person van, the same fish soup cooked for lunch by the driver (smelled great but I wasn’t going to eat even if it was vegan when we were driving all day on those obstacle sources of rocks, dunes, and tree roots), and the same collection of sights before and after Khoboy along the way. It cost 1100 rubles per person (100 of that was a random charge that we weren’t told about in advance and I kind of think was the driver and his friends tricking us but what could be do), which is like 15 pounds, so not bad for an entire day of sightseeing. And the landscape really is beautiful.
Okay, so this is a little terrible, but the name of the cape is pronounced like ‘ho boy’, a little phlegmier, but still close, so the entire week not joking (and still) Z and I were repeating to each other our favorite bit of SNL weekend update:
it’s when your whole body goes
hoo boyyyyy
Khoboy itself requires a decent amount of time for a hike down and up through all the twists of the mountain. We ran into our French friends there, which was hilarious. It was a beautiful place, which makes me sadder about how weird it is to be a tourist there. Seriously if they just paved the road and excavated the outhouses once in a while (it had been a too-long while for most of them) it would be oodles better.
All over Siberia, we have seen trees and bushes covered in scarves and pieces of colorful cloth. It’s like a shaman thing, I think. Shamanism is big in this part of the country. The trees are really fun to see.
Khoboy had an outhouse (worst condition of whole island), so that was lucky, since this was another of the three days (out of four) where I was a ball of nerves all day about having to pee. I’m so dehydrated.
The driver also took us to other outlets along the north side of the island, beautiful rocks jutting out over the lake that we climbed up and hiked down (some of the pics above are those other parts of the cape; I can’t tell which was which part). It was exhausting but really worth it, so beautiful.
But again, the roads. My god. I bet you think I’m being dramatic just for the sake of drama, exaggerating. Here is another picture I took on the route when I WASN’T hanging on for dear life.
These are not roads, and our little bus, my god, it’s a miracle that it made it through. All the tours are in identical buses and I just do not understand how they operate after driving through this. We spent almost 45 minutes driving through WOODS. Like, without a road, just making our way in the woods. In a bus. Here’s a picture of us going through the woods behind another car. The one in front of us really gives you the perspective I need you to have in order to agree with me on how insane this all is.
pretty scary right?
Another day, we went on a hike along the lake with the French people. It was a cold and rainy day, but we said hey let’s be outdoorsy. But then it started to really rain, like buckets, like pouring freaking rain, and the ground/sand was incredibly muddy and I started to have trouble making my way up without slipping backwards, which is a really scary feeling, and the ground just kept giving way instead of letting me progress and it was miserable. Beautiful, but miserable. Luckily, the foggy weather really reflected that state.
that’s a boat!
It totally looks like Japan, or a scene out of Avatar, right? That fog was insane. The farther we went, the harder it got to see where we had come from, and with the rain getting harder and harder and the ground getting wetter and wetter, we all decided to stop and head back before too long (too long for me though). Our shoes were so disgusting. Not to mention our pants. We’re just always dirty this trip, it seems.
I know right now you are like…dude…all of these nature scenes look gorgeous! Why are you complaining so much! But see it’s just because it’s been a minute since I wrote about the driving conditions. After all this beauty, we still had to get back to Irkutsk/civilization. And when I tell you that the return minibus journey was BY FAR the worst bus trip yet, I really mean it. The van was not nice this time. Instead, it was over-crowded, and the door was broken. There was no trunk area for luggage, so 20 people all with giant backpacks and suitcases had to sit WITH their luggage either on their lap or in the aisle next to them, making this the most unsafe bus ever, not to mention impossible to get on and off of. The driver was awful and refused to stop for lunch. The whole thing was so bad that, when we got to the ferry crossing (where we got out of the car) (after about 1 1/2 hours), Z and I actually knocked on the windows of every car on the ferry and asked if they could take us the rest of the way for whatever money they wanted. Unfortunately, the only ones who had room for us were not going to Irkutsk. Seriously, that’s how bad it was. Thank god we made it back in one piece. When the driver started letting people off in Irkutsk, we got off at the first opportunity even though we were like 20 minutes walk from our hostel. We didn’t care we just needed to get off that death machine.
minibus from hell
Luckily, we got off in Irkutsk right near our favorite place, Engineer Coffee (or something like that), with the best, nicest staff and the best coffee (according to the coffee drinker of the two of us). They also had clean bathrooms, free water, and good wifi. It was a godsend.
After we dropped our bags back at the Hostel Baikaler for the few hours we had until our sleeper train to Ulan-Ude, we went in search of food. We decided on the great-named Sushied, with the ‘sushi’ part in cyrillic and then the ‘ed’ added after that. So fun, and the food was decent. I needed all the vegetables and ordered a green salad, a seaweed salad, a veggie sushi roll, and a veggie noodle stir-fry (to share and granted I gave Z most of the stir-fry but still, lots of food!).
my favorite kind of salad is two salads |
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So, all in all, I guess I’m glad we went to Olkhon? Lake Baikal is beautiful, and it’s cool to be somewhere few people go. But man. The discrepancy between the scenery on the coast and the lake versus the journey there and the roads and the town, it’s drastic. If you had a private helicopter you should take that and try it out for 2 days maybe. It really is so beautiful. But what a mess it all was. Except that bed. My god I loved that bed.
the main intersection of Khuzir, Olkhon Island
that lake tho
honestly I think my fave thing about Olkhon is that they recycle. first place we saw in Russia doing it.
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Gozo, Malta: Lots to See and Enjoy Besides the Azure Window (RIP)
Last summer, Husband and I spent a lovely vacation all over Malta, a tiny country with many beautiful sights and at least one very amazing Eurovision song. It’s just below Sicily and to the east of Tunisia so, unfortunately, it’s often overlooked when people plan vacations to the area and choose the more well-known places. They/you shouldn’t, because Malta is a wonderful spot for a holiday. It offers a calmer, smaller experience than the more famous places in the area but with natural beauty and charm and (most importantly when coming from Britain) warmth. I wrote about Valletta, the capital, a while back and I’ll be writing about all the different places we saw eventually, but today I want to talk about Gozo, the even tinier island just to the northeast of the main island. Gozo was probably our favorite part of Malta. It had stunning natural beauty and interesting archaeological sites. The seemingly endless dirt ‘roads’ and desert-like atmosphere made it seem like we were discovering new land, which is a hard feeling to have in Europe.
Despite its size, Gozo has a lot to offer travelers. We spent two days on Gozo, arriving via the ferry from the main island. You don’t have to pay to go to Gozo – you pay for the round-trip on the return journey. Very efficient! During the short time, we drove our rental car all over tarnation with Siri telling us atrocious things to do like make a left turn into a café and then drive down a pedestrian pathway full of tables and benches. (We did not do those things.) So, if you go, note that Malta is like the most civilized, settled place in the world that global positioning systems just do NOT understand. Those drives included trips to the beach, another beach, another beautiful beach, archaeological sites, and more.
One of our favorite sights was the Azure Window, a natural stone formation at the coast that somehow, through the power of nature, formed a kind of square above the insanely violent, crashing waves of the Mediterranean Sea, which I never knew could be so ferocious and intense. So, this brings me to today’s most serious self-beratement as I realize that hot damn I need to be more punctual with my blog posts (I still have a 2.5 year backlog) – because of the news coming out of Gozo a few weeks ago that that shockingly violent sea finally caused what the Maltese had been dreading, the fall of the Azure Window. Ecological reports during recent years have stated that this destruction would be inevitable and that there was no manmade engineering feat that could save it. A particularly bad storm was the final act that brought it down, but it was going to happen soon anyway. It’s devastating for the Maltese people to have one of their most beautiful sights and an important part of their culture gone in a flash. As travelers, it’s a reminder to us that you can’t expect the world to stay the same until you’re ready to see it. We were lucky that we up and decided to go to Malta last year, as it was generally a random decision based on ‘this sounds like a nice place’. If we had thought eh maybe next summer, we would have missed this experience. The world keeps changing in all kinds of ways, and if you want to do or see something, it won’t wait for you.
Luckily for those of you who haven’t been to Malta, the country and Gozo itself still has a lot to offer. It’s a shame that you won’t get to see the Azure Window, but there’s still plenty to see and plenty reason to go.
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ok so I know it looks like just a pile of rocks but SHE GIVES YOU FOOD AND SHE GIVES YOU REST AND SHE HOLDS YOU CLOSE TO HER GIANT BREAST
A very cool archaeological site we saw in the town of Xaghra was Ggantija (pronounced just kidding I have no idea), or “Giant’s Tower”, which is fun because literally all day I was singing “there are giants in the skyyyyyyyy”. It’s a UNESCO World Heritage site along with other Megalithic Temples of Gozo. These towers are hella old, like dating back to 3000 BCE, older than the Egyptian pyramids and, at least according to mythology, made with less blood and suffering. The manmade religious structure is a ceremonial fertility site, which makes sense when you consider the folklore behind it: A giantess who ate nothing but broad beans (#me) had a bebbeh with a commoner, and once she birthed the baby she just carried it around and built the temples while holding it, nbd. Strong giantess sounds LEGIT. A big tall terrible lady giant sweeping the floooooor…
This site was hard to find because the GPS was wrong, as it was pretty much the entire trip. But it was worth the frustration of finding it! It’s a relatively small site, but definitely a must on Gozo.
AND YOU KNOW THINGS NOW THAT YOU NEVER KNEW BEFOOOOORE
i do snack on broad beans a lot, those fried and salted ones that are sold in every natural food store here? so good! and usually in the bulk bins too so they are economical |
SUCH a romantic poem jesus h christ men are SO WEIRD AND GROSS THIS IS NOT ROMANTIC AHHHHH |
Next, we drove to the town of Victoria to see the Citadel, or Gran Castello, which is much better than the school in South Carolina full of sexism. The Citadel is a medieval castle and fortress with fortifications dating back to 1500 BCE. Apparently it was built by the Crown of Aragon, but I think some nerds were having fun messing with Wikipedia because he’s a guy from Lord of the Rings; even I know that. We walked the maze of walkways along the ramparts as they were gallantly screaming and just kind of took it in, ya know, got sunburnt, ya know.
best part |
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the view from the Citadel it makes you so thirsty right?? so dry!
We also stopped in the Church of St. John the Baptist, mostly because there was a panorama view at the top. Whenever we travel, if there is a thing at the top of something, we climb it. It’s what we do. Unforch, this church didn’t have stairs up to the top (or that we could find), but it did have an elevator. The scariest lift ever. We tried to take it, but it wasn’t working, so some staffer (bishop?) came and fiddled some but then called for an electrician. We were like, naw man it’s okay, don’t worry about it, but he was like ‘no no the electrician is outside’. It was hard to discern whether the electrician was already en route to fix this elevator or whether Gozo really is that small that you’re just like, always right outside any place, but regardless, electrician came in, turned a key, and up we went to the top of the church, by ourselves, 99% sure that it wasn’t going to stay powered the whole way up. Luckily it did, and we explored the quite large roof terraces before worrying about the trip down. The best part by far was the great signage around the walkways, followed closely by the views. Oh and also there was a chair in the elevator, which I found hilarious. It’s like three stories.
oh look this is a church 
this was the original lyric to ‘come on get happy’ |
they wanted me to review the elevator on tripadvisor literally just the elevator. it was a good elevator I guess because it worked 
i still object for the record |
view from the citadel
The best part of Gozo was the beaches. We drove around to a few different ones one day. As luck would have it, the last beach we went to, Ramla Bay, was the best one, which sucked because we had such a short time before it started getting cold and dark, but still it was great. The red sand of this beach made me feel like I was on Mars or something but without the horribleness of being in space. There was nothing really special about the flat scenery compared to the gorgeous rocky cliffs in other parts of the island, but something about how pleasant it was, how easy it was to maneuver, and how much it was like the beaches we’re accustomed to (i.e. soft sand and an open sea) made us feel peaceful and happy.
So, even though it’s really heartbreaking that the Azure Window is gone, you shouldn’t count out a trip to Gozo because of it – there’s still plenty to do. Just think, all this is just the stuff I can remember! There are literally hundreds of photos of cool things that I just can’t identify because it takes me years to blog about things! So go and see all the things and then maybe you can help me figure out what else I saw.
you could be a farmer in those clothes
Turpan, China: Never Need a Reason, Never Need a Rhyme, Let’s All Call It Turpantine
Our next stop on our Silk Road journey was the city of Turpan (the English name) in the Xinjiang region of China. It’s also known as Turfan and Tulufan (in Uighur and Chinese) while I, on the other hand, refer to it as Turpan Alley, because it is a bit of a hole. Turpan was a fertile little oasis town back in the day, and today (and probably back then too) is known as “China’s Death Valley” because it’s one of the few places below sea level and also because IT’S DUCKING HOT AS BALLS. It’s so hot and sunny and dry that walking around the city would have been uncomfortable even if it wasn’t a bit of a hole. Apparently, the Chinese like to say that Turpan is farther from the ocean than any other place in the world, which I don’t doubt but that is a chitty thing to brag about. (I hate feeling landlocked! I love being near water! This trip is difficult for me.) The best part about Turpan (and Xinjiang) is that this climate grows some insane delicious watermelon.
Turpan was an important Silk Road stop because desert traders in desperate need of fresh water love them some temperatures hotter than at any other point in their desert struggles? is that why? Or maybe because of the watermelon. Actually, Turpan had an impressive system of irrigation that I’m sure increased its draw to caravan-peeps seeking water. They brought fresh water down from the snowy Tien Shan mountains, which is the name of the brand of bottled water that we found most in Xinjiang and then in Kyrgyzstan so hooray for longstanding traditions. Archaeological sites in the Turpan Depression (the fitting name for the whole region, although they mean because it’s so low in the earth and not because of what it does to you) uncovered important old stuff from many centuries ago that helped researchers understand the goings-on of traders and others passing through. In fact, Turpan was the site of important discoveries of certain specific goods. Silver coins were big here – in fact, the plethora of silver coins found here helped prove that China’s main trading partner along the Silk Route was not Rome, as many romantic history buffs (are there such a thing) would like to think, but the Iranian world, because zero coins from the Roman Republic were ever found anywhere in China. I knowww. Zilch. Anywhere. You’d think even once drunk on a dare a trader would try to go to Rome. But then I guess they wouldn’t return. Or they just didn’t have enough time in their lives to go there AND back. They were walking, people! Turpan was also big on burying their dead in paper outfits they made in craft sessions, I imagine, like an ancient version of stitch-and-bitch. A lot of boring but informative documents – contracts, meeting notes, whatever – were pieced together to make clothes for corpses. You might be thinking, no way no how corpses were preserved let alone regular old paper that could actually be read! But yeah, that’s how dry Turpan is, that lots of paper and lots of corpses were preserved with no effort on their part other than to Be In The Driest Hottest Land Ever. (We saw some of those corpses in the Urumqi Museum (coming next). I am very much done with such things.) Today, the important things to see include the Emin Minaret, which is impossible to find in the maze of little backstreets, and the ancient ruins of Jiaohe.
The big other draws in the city are the Bazaar and the Night Market – both of which were nowhere to be found during our visit! This is a good time to tell you about the Xinjiang region of China, an autonomous territory in northwest China where these Silk Road sites lie. Being all autonomous, Xinjiang has a separatist movement with its native Uighur people trying to become their own state (that’s what that means) of East Turkestan which is a cute name. China of course wants to quash that but good, and has been kind of sending Han Chinese people into Xinjiang to balance out the population – or dilute the local culture and traditions. It’s all very tense and uneasy. All the Chinese train stations had crazy security, but it’s enhanced beyond anything I’ve ever seen before in Xinjiang. Police are everywhere. In Turpan, there was a police building on every single block – I am not exaggerating – with at least 5 policemen patrolling outside. They say it’s because of terror threats from the local Uighur people, who are mostly Muslim and who look completely different from the Han Chinese. It seemed a little like a control method to keep them down. Throughout the region, we saw average Uighur locals stopped by police to have their phones examined, which is police state bullshit. They are definitely treated like second class citizens in their own land, which is like Indigenous People 101.
All of this to say, we think that maybe the Bazaar and the Night Market – two very crowded very public gatherings, the kind that are difficult to police in excruciating detail – were shut down due to ‘safety precautions’ but possibly as a way to continue curbing the goings on of the Uighurs and take away their traditions and culture. However, Turpan is one of the more Chinese-friendly of the Xinjiang cities; the officials are friendlier towards the locals and it’s more easygoing, if you can believe it with police on every inch of ground. (Kashgar, for instance, is considered more of a problem and the government is a lot more hostile there towards the Uighurs. (Kashgar, incidently, was my favorite part of Xinjiang, but we will get there.)) But then again, I haven’t been able to find anything about these events being permanently closed, so maybe we just happened to be there on a bad day. It sucks that we couldn’t find these two fun events, and I really hope that we just couldn’t find them, because it obviously would be much, much worse to be right that the Chinese government just up and decided to clamp down on the locals doing their thing.
Part of Jiaohe…sort of…we passed a little village on our walk from the visitor centre to the ruins that I think was a separate ticket but we just went in
This guy stands watch outside the Jiaohe ruins
So, let’s talk about what we actually did do. From Dunhuang, we had to drive two hours (inexpensive taxi that we had the Silk Road Yododo inn hire, which was annoyingly difficult but easier than it would have been to deal with getting one ourselves as we keep learning) to the Liuyuan Train Station to get a fast train to Turpan. The security at Liuyuan was our first real look at the Xinjiang craziness. There were dozens – dozens! – of police and security officials, and it was not a big station at all. They found our camping utensils – a magnetic set of a fork, spoon, and baby-sized knife – plus our Swiss Army knife, and were not pleased. You CANNOT get on trains in Xinjiang with anything weapony, including all sizes of knives and scissors. We learned this at this point. I think our foreign privilege gave us a pass and instead of confiscating them, security officials taped up all the knives so we can’t get into them (not without another knife, lol) but let us keep them, and they made us sign a book with our passport numbers given. I guess in case there was report of a crime committed with a tiny little camping knife, they would have our info.
View from the train station, outside the city center. This is as modern as it gets
The train to Turpan was only 4 hours, which is absolutely nothing to us now, and then we got a taxi to our hostel, called Dap Hostel – like giving dap? Hilarious. The hostel was a legit travelers’/backpackers’ land, with tons of dirty yoots smoking and drinking at all hours in an inner courtyard that all the rooms encircle so you have no choice but to listen and smell it all. I did not like this place. The staff was very stupid and the bathrooms were gross. There was one trench sink, like 4 feet long, with one drain and three faucets and everyone would stand cramped together to brush their teeth and spit together and it was harrowing. The service was bad. Z asked for a coffee one morning (they have a chalkboard coffee menu at reception) and one girl said okay. No one brought any coffee. We asked a different girl. She said okay. No coffee. We asked a third. Then we asked the original girl and she said ‘you didn’t get it?’ It took over a half hour for someone to pour Z a cup of coffee from an already made pot. Then we asked if they could call a taxi for us on our last morning to the train station. Two staff members spoke in Chinese to each other for 10 minutes before turning to us and saying, “There’s a bus that goes.” Thank you. You’ve been helpful. If we wanted to take the bus, we would take the bus. And actually, it’s not a direct bus, you have to switch buses, which is bullshit to do when a taxi would be cheap and easier, and also, you are a travelers’ hostel you should know how to call a taxi when it’s the main way of getting around your city.
Who knows if Turpan ever stood a chance with me, because if I hate where I’m sleeping, it’s hard for me to loosen up enough to accept anything. As for the aforementioned sights that actually did exist, let’s start with the Emin Minaret. We walked around the dusty heat of small residential streets trying to find the mosque for almost an hour, and it was supremely difficult. There are few signs, and they are incomplete, leaving you in view of the minaret but with no evident way of actually reaching it. We both said we’d never been so close to a destination – seemingly so close you could touch it – and yet so far – seeing no clear way of actually reaching it. In the end, we had to ask three different random people in the area how to navigate the maze of their homes. One teenager on a bike, one ancient woman on her front stoop, and one shepherd who was, well, herding some sheep. We finally found the back entrance of the complex once we had finished all our water and we quickly bought up some bottles of clear liquid from a chest on the site. We assumed it was cold water. It was cream soda. (Say it with me: FFS CHINA!)
The Emin Minaret stands tall as the defining monument in central Turpan, blending Uighur architecture and history with Islamic traditions. It’s made of wood and brick and is pretty cool considering how it looks nothing like China. There are very few Muslim buildings in China, almost all of which are in Xinjiang, so it’s rare and interesting to see the mixture of Chinese and Islamic art or architecture. A guard let us look inside the basic mosque and we just walked around for a little. There’s a toilet, so that’s good.
screaming from the minaretssss
Now onto the Jiaohe ruins
The big thing to see when in Turpan is the Jiaohe Ruins, about 10 kilometers outside the city. We shared a taxi with a rando from the hostel and usually they charge a flat rate to Jiaohe but this driver just used the meter and it was cheaper so score. Jiaohe is an archaeological site and used to be an important place along the Silk Road, including at one time being the seat of the Protector General of the Western Regions, which is the highest ranking military post of Chinese officials stationed in the west. Jiaohe was a city full of residential districts, temples, stupas, and of course government offices. All the ruins now look the same since it is, in fact, in ruins, and the site is a vast expanse of white dusty broken rocks. Walking around the ruins for hours was the hottest I have ever felt, well, until later in our trip. Our skin was melting. The sun was like a few inches above my head, it seemed. As the cherry on top of this sundae of discomfort and frustration, the toilet on the grounds was padlocked and there are no staff members anywhere near the actual ruins, only at the visitor centre and ticket office which is 3 kilometers down the road. I know. Say it with me.
*shakes fist at an entire country over this*
When we bought tickets at said visitor centre, they didn’t tell us that everyone should take the shuttle bus around that costs 30 yuan extra. We were like, we can walk, we don’t need to pay for the extra bus. The woman selling tickets should have said, well actually everyone takes the bus it is dumb not to. ACTUALLY, they should just add the cost of the bus to the ticket price and be done with being stupid, because there are no signs on the road for how the F to get there. So we were on this deserted winding road like, where do we actually go? We walked down where we saw shuttle buses going and it was three kilometers away in the sun and heat and oh my goddd. For the biggest site in the area, not having any signage is pretty ridiculous. Ugh but why would they ever have signs for pedestrians at any site, right? We already learned this! Anyway, we finally found it, and it was hot. It was fine, for an archaelogical site, but without enough descriptive signs (not just not in English, but like, none) it was hard to care.
The best part of walking, though, was some fortuitous happenings at the end of our visit. On the walk back, we were so hot and so dehydrated that we were really craving some of that famous watermelon. Across from the exit/entrance to return to the visitor center was this lovely little path covered with a trellis with what looked like a restaurant underneath. An old Uighur couple was sitting on carpets on the floor, and we peeked in and saw some watermelons under a big table. So we went up and pointed and communicated that we would like some watermelon. The lady was super friendly and picked a giant one up and weighed it and then was just going to sell us a whole damn watermelon, and we were like no no we want to eat it now, like sitting here, and also we don’t have knives they taped up our knives and she understood and took it in the back to cut up and motioned for us to sit at the table. And then we realized, oh shit, she’s gonna bring us like an ENTIRE watermelon cut up and not just a few pieces like we want. Lo and behold, a few minutes later she came out with a silver platter stacked with an entire sliced watermelon, plus several bunches of grapes. I’ve been talking a lot about how good the watermelon is, but Turpan is actually famous throughout China and the stans for having incredible grapes and thus incredible raisins. I know, raisins, they’re the worst, but no the raisins in Turpan are delicious, as are the grapes, and here we were being given soo many grapes! It was so lovely and kind. We were cracking up at how much watermelon we were housing. It was probably the best watermelon I’ve ever had. And the grapes were amazing. Everything was. When we really could not force any more into our bodies, the lady took the platter away and then came back with all the rest of the watermelon AND the grapes packed in a plastic bag for us to take away. NICEST PEOPLE IN ALL OF CHINA! We stood up and went over to them to pay and they both waved our wallets away and shook their heads. We were like what, come on, are you kidding me? And they would not accept any money. We felt really bad – we ate your fruit guys! – but they really were vehemently against us paying. It was the nicest encounter in all of China. Probably this entire summer actually.
best ever
Aside from that lovely experience, it was hard to find food in Turpan. And not just for me finding vegan food! Just finding food, period! Like for Z too! One night we lucked out and finally found this great Han Chinese restaurant with a picture menu that had tofu and vegetables and ALSO had purple velour booths with the chintziest chandeliers you’ve ever seen. It was inexpensive and really good food but it took way too long for it to arrive. The homestyle tofu was great. We also finally got to try the weird jelly noodle dish that’s all over China. It’s a weird texture but it was done well here – SO incredibly spicy! And hooray for veggies! The waitress also recommended that we get these crunchy fried tomato sticks and we were like, wow sure that sounds really interesting! Too interesting – she meant potato. Lol. They were actually good, like french fries but with a little bit of a sweet exterior too, but we would probably not have gotten them if we knew they were potatoes! Fried tomato sticks sound good, right? Or gross? Make them and let me know.
So I have no idea what this restaurant was called, I’m sorry, but if you go to Turpan and ask the people where you are staying about the purple velvet booths I bet they know it. We had enough leftovers to eat for lunch the next day (no one stole them from the hostel fridge!). It seems I forgot to take a pic of the potato sticks, oh no, but just imagine fries with like, seeds?
yes the couch is studded with huge faux diamonds
HELLO LOVER
spicy weird jelly
tofu in China, I mean, does it get better
We should have returned there the next night, but instead we tried to find John’s Information Cafe in the backyard of the Turpan Hotel which according to our guidebook was a great place for backpackers with decent food. John’s no longer exists. In its place, literally in the backyard of this hotel, is a kebab grilling joint where you point to kebabs and they grill them so everything tastes the same and you reek of smoke for days. It was not my favorite place. I pointed to sticks of vegetables and what they said was tofu/doufu but it did not have the texture of anything resembling tofu so I didn’t trust it and couldn’t eat it. The texture was just so wrong. Shame.
The best part of Turpan, aside from the watermelon couple, was the bread babushka in the alley outside our hostel. She had a stand with the BEST breads I’ve had since my St. Petersburg babushka. Unfortunately, she wasn’t out the day we left. Shame. Also I forgot to take a picture of her cart. Shame. Here is a picture of the rival bread man across the alley from her and much inferior.
this guy said his dumpling-y things were vegetarian. they were not.
So, Turpan Alley. That’s really all I have to say about that. Some interesting sights but I didn’t learn as much about the Silk Road as I did in Dunhuang or our later Silk Road sites (or as much I learned about Turpan from my books, which like…come on you should learn more at the actual site right! Otherwise people will never leave their couches! Ohh…couch…I miss you…). There are so many incredible places in China, lots we saw and lots we have still on our list, that I think this is really for Silk Road aficionados and not novices like me. I can recommend street bread and eating all the watermelon and grapes. Shout out to our watermelon friends.
