Xinjiang Travel Reviews

1,000 kilometers can be a long way to travel in one sitting. Let me rephrase that: 1,000 kilometers IS a long way to travel in one sitting! Unfortunately, that's approximately the distance one would have to cover in order to get back from border town of Kashgar to the capital of Urumqi. The Taklamakan ... Details

“I’m sorry, I must have heard you wrong” I told the men at the gate in Chinese. “Tell me again, how much will it cost for me and my friends to enter the park?” One of the gate guards repeated himself slowly and with better pronunciation, but the price remained the same. ... Details

Located in the heart of Kashgar, a city on the western tip of Xinjiang inhabited mostly by Islamic Uyghurs is a mosque that by many standards might be considered small yet is well-known as the largest mosque in China. The Islamic art is easily distinguishable among the drab shopping centers which surround ... Details

State Highway 312 is an unforgettable route as it meanders through the hills and mountains on the way to Pakistan. It is a paved road, to be sure, but it rarely ever feels like it. Whether you are stopping to wait for camels to cross the road, honking to get around a herd of sheep, swerving to avoid ... Details

Urumqi, the capital of Xinjiang, is not a common destination on every traveler's "to-visit" list. Frankly there's not too much interest in the one thing that has put Urumqi on the map, or more precisely into the Guinness Book of World Records - the fact that it is the most remote city from ... Details

Every day people travel hundreds, even thousands of miles to see with their own eyes pieces of art, architecture, or history. Sometimes it is found in a museum exhibit, sometimes it can be found stuck in a crowded city or nestled quietly in the middle of a park, but rarely will one be forced leave ... Details

I've visited places with most exotic landscapes - deserts, mountains, valleys, marshes, and beaches. I've visited places that made me exclaim "Ah!!! This is the most wonderful place I've seen". I've been to places that are of historical significance, of geographical miracles, of ethnical importance ... Details

For more than four hours in air-conditioned comfort we had been climbing ever so slowly out of the depths of the Turpan basin, which at its lowest point is over 500 feet below sea level – the second lowest depression in the world. Hami for us was as welcome a sight, as it must have been over ... Details

I’ve always loved the outdoors, so when I heard about Xinjiang’s vast plains and snowy peaks, I wanted to see as much of the province as I could. But I never knew my desire to travel could get me into so much trouble.

I spent less than 24 hours in Urumqi before boarding a plane to ... Details

After two weeks of teaching English in Jinghong, Yunnan province, I boarded a China Southern flight eventually headed to Urumqi, the capital city of northwest China’s Xinjiang province. Looking around, I knew many of these people weren’t Chinese, at least not in the way westerners perceive ... Details