We decided since we got sidetracked in Dunhuang that we had to at least travel to Turpan during our extended layover in Urumqi. It is unfortunate that it’s the worst time to visit the “Death Valley” of China but we’re here and not sure if we will be in this part of the world anytime soon.
Remaking of the Silk Road near the Flaming Mountains outside Turpan
Bus to China’s Death Valley
Camels for hire at the Flaming Mountain outside of Turpan – Xinjiang, Chna
The bus from the long distance bus terminal in Nianzigou easiest and cheapest way to get to Turpan. Public bus No. 51 drops off passengers in front of the station and across the street from the Urumqi Water Park. The public bus costs 1 RMB and you pay when you get off. A one way ticket to Turpan is currently 20 RMB per person. The VIP is in name only. The buses have some miles on them, the seats are a little rickedy and there’s a bucket sitting in the middle of the aisle which I gathered was for trash? At least the ticket is cheap and the ride isn’t really that long. Travelers should get an early start to secure a front seat on a direct bus that takes about 2 1/2 – 3 hours. Tickets are assigned to a seat number, and if someone is sitting in yours don’t hesitate to politely give them the boot.
Desert Transition from China to Central Asia
Turpan is officially in China but has more of a Central Asian feel to it. The landscape, the street food, and the diversity of the local people are just a few of the first things that can be seen just a few steps from the bus terminal. The haggling for everything from hotel room price to the cost of a car for the day begins here. Bargain hard.
Turpan is second lowest depression in the world and holds the title of being China’s furthest point away from any ocean. During the end of July, standing outside in the middle of the day in Turpan pretty much feels as if I am standing in front of an open convection oven. So yes, it’s HOT and probably the most uncomfortable time to be here. The one advantage we have is lesser amounts of package tour hordes to deal with at the sites themselves. The sites are slowly being reconstructed by the Chinese Government making less authentic and turning into more like theme park attractions. There is still much to see, but they work fast here. So, there is no doubt that what remains somewhat authentic today could be literally gone tomorrow.
To Book a Room Ahead or not?
Turpan is a sort of town where getting a room on arrival is doable. The town can easily be visited in a couple of days depending on the person. The rates are negotiable upon arrival. Booking on the spot will lower the higher rack rate and it’s always good to see the room before making a commitment.
Turpan Hotel and John’s Information Cafe – Good Food and Cold Beer
We had a hit list of options and started with the best option location wise. Our first choice was the Transportation Hotel located in the bus station. It gets good reviews on Trip Advisor and is new. The hotel is nice, but I would probably try out the Turpan Hotel. John’s Cafe on the property serves great food under a grapevine terrace, cold beer, wi-fi is available and the staff are very friendly. The hotel is a bit dated, but other travelers we met said they were happy with the hotel. Despite what the LP Guide says, John’s Cafe does provide travelers with travel information and can arrange car services to the area sites.
Dunhuang is different things to the various travelers who either arrive by private car, bus, train or plane into this “City of Sand”. Some come here seeking to concur the Gobi Desert by camel and others are simply looking to view what’s left of the ancient Silk Road. There is enough here to please both groups.
The front of the Mogao Caves – DunhuangEntrance to Mogao Caves – Dunhuang
The Mogao Caves
Dunhuang is currently one of China’s top domestic tourist destinations and currently under construction. The Mogao Thousand Buddha Grottoes just outside of town is getting a complete makeover, like much of China’s top tourist sites and cities these days. According to our tour guide, the ancient Buddhist caves dating back to the 5th century. A.D. get up to 6,000 visitors a day during the high summer season. Carbon dioxide has been taking a toll on the interior paintings that have been open to the public since the 1980’s. The damaged cave doors will soon close when the brand new Mogao Caves Museum opens in a year or so giving the public a shiny new camera friendly scene to witness.
Yadan Landforms inside the Yardung Geological Park outside of DunhuangThe Jade Gate of the Silk Road outside of Dunhuang
The current ticket price to tour the caves is ¥160 + another ¥20 for a guide for Non-Chinese. Was it worth it? Yes, now it is even though no pictures are allowed. In the long run, the site will get a rest and hopefully will be properly preserved. At least some will be may happy with the change. I’m sure many welcome the chance to be able to take pictures despite the fact that they aren’t the real thing.
The Yardung Geological Park
To some, the desert areas that make up the Yardung Geological Park west of Dunhuang is just a bunch of rocks shaped supposedly like Chinese mythological creatures and leftovers from the good old days of when this area was the gateway of the Silk Road. It was once the area where dinosaurs roamed, a very large lake once stood. Centuries later, trade masters, maybe even Marco Polo, lead their camels through the Jade Gate. It was a place to refuel and pay taxes before continuing west to Central Asia and east towards Chang’an. Little has been left behind but there is still much to see here in the Gobi Desert even if it’s a rock shaped like a Phoenix.
Singing Sands in Dunhaung
The Buzzing Sands
The dunes resting next to fruit tree groves at the western edge of town where once a place where travels could rest and enjoy a sunset while listening to the wind pass through the orange sandy hills. They have long been known as Mingsha Shan or the “Echoing Sand Mountain”. Today, the luxury Silk Road Hotel Resort, cranes and workers building more resorts, thousands of camels and all types of recreation vehicles all can be found in amongst the dune landscape. The buzz of paragliders drowns out any singing going on here.
A ticket ¥180 gets visitors though the gates, into a rented a pair of orange booties and away off to explore the dunes on the back of a camel or inside of a less than safe looking paragliders. Many visitors can skip all of that. There are roads that lead into the apricot groves and end where the desert is less crowded. It is still possible to see the dunes minus the tour groups and hubbub of the theme park it has become.
Keeping it Real in the Desert in ChinaDesert Fun in Dunhuang
Kumamoto-Jo Castle in Kyushu – JapanMt. Aso – Kyushu
Japan will always be on the top of my travel list. June was spent traveling around the southern parts of Japan. Previous visits were short, but we now had the ability to spend as much time as we liked or could afford on the weak USD. We started in Osaka since a couple of friends were getting married in May on Lake Biwako near Kyoto. After that, we grabbed a Peach Airlines Flight to southern island of Kyushu and spent a couple of weeks hopping around the volcanic island. We ended up just skirting the usually wet rainy season they experienced just a few days after we flew to Tokyo.
We ended the Japan trip in Tokyo. We decided to rent out a service apartment in the Shinjuku. Here, we planned out our upcoming Fall trip and sorted out most of our visas to the “Stans” of Central Asia, spent our days hanging out with friends, enjoying the city, local food and the luxury of having access to real high-speed internet.
Departing Gate at the Narita Airport – TokyoArrival Gate at the Beijing Airport
Bumpy ride to Beijing!
It’s been a few years since I have experienced one of those flights that makes you swear you will never fly again. We landed after the pilot decided to head straight through a storm that was heading towards Beijing. When we landed, most passengers were flushed and blurry eyed as we streamed into to arrivals terminal at Beijing International. Some fellow passengers were stained by the flying sodas, juice etc. that flew through the air as our plane made an unexpected drop during dinner service. I managed to escape unscathed. I was just so happy to be on solid ground once again. The pilot did manage to get the plane down ahead of the storm, but the dark clouds caught up streamed in and opened up just as we arrived into the city.
The downpour started just as we got off the metro. We got trapped at the metro station without umbrellas or a small boat to get us through the flooded streets to our hostel. We ended up spending about 1 hour waiting for an opportunity to make a run for it. The journey from metro to hostel required some puddle and sidewalk sink holes dodging but we finally made it.
We managed to drag ourselves and our stuff safely to the Hutong west of the Forbidden City that first stormy night in Beijing. We got soaked but our stuff wasn’t. I’m not sure how we pulled that one-off, but we did thankfully.
Waiting on a Visa…
We had just one night at the Hutong Hostel and later moved to an apartment on the other side of Beijing until we headed west towards Central Asia in a couple of weeks. Hostels are great but having a washer, kitchen and quiet work area were necessary this time.
We were here to get our Turkmenistan Visa and see more of post-Olympics Beijing. It was a lot of work for all the back and forth, waiting, some more waiting all for a 10 day required tour. Beijing is a large city so there’s much to see and do while we wait.
Tiananmen SquareMilitary Museum – Beijing
The National Museum, the Olympic Park and the Military Museum were the top three on our must see list this time. We got our Turkmenistan visa, saw the top three, and managed to see both the Forbidden City and Tiananmen Square again.
Our time in Beijing soon came to an end. With our visas in hand and better idea of what direction we will be going in the next few months, we boarded an Air China flight to Urumqi. In Beijing, we managed to survive both the elevated AQI levels and a couple of storms that pummeled the city during our two-week visit. I’m sure Beijing will all be a totally different the next time we stop by for a visit or maybe not?
It’s been a long time (a few years actually) since I’ve written anything substantial in a blog post, so please forgive me as I get my ‘blog legs’ back in order. Oddly enough, this will start off with a case of deja vu from early 2008. Back then we were traveling around Laos and Vietnam and were trying to do some forward planing for the next few months. Singapore, the Philippines, Japan, and China were on our wayward list, but what about after that? How about Central Asia or “the ‘stans” as they are colloquially known? Thoughts of Mongol hordes, glorious Persian architecture, and towering mountains filled my head and invoked some serious wanderlust. We could travel by land across China and fly out from somewhere in the region (Tashkent perhaps?). A great way to spend late Spring/early Summer. Easy, right?
A few days of detailed Internet searching put that notion of ease quickly to rest. Central Asia is definitely not high on the tourist/backpacker roadshow and gathering information on a general route through the region was few and far between. Tales of “Letters of Invite”, mandated tours, and Soviet style bureaucracy left a distinctly dry feeling in ones mouth. We would either have to get visas as we went (less than ideal given visa constraints) or would have to get them all at once in Beijing (the only place in East Asia with all five consulates). Given that we were coming into China on a 30 day non-extendable visa, logistics among the embassies would be tight. This was right before the Olympic games and the Chinese authorities were starting to clamp down on giving out/renewing visas. Ultimately, however, our hopes were dashed when we arrived in Beijing in early April. The March 2008 events in Tibet resulted in the closing off of western China to foreigners (i.e. anything past Chengdu). We decided at that point to move on to North Africa and would revisit the plan for Central Asia at a later date. The one upside was that we started following the Uncornered Market folks, as they were one of the few blogs out there with information about the region.
Fast forward to 2012 and we’re in East Asia again. After spending three months last year dealing with visa/tour fun for our September trip to Iran, acquiring visas for Central Asia is easy by comparison. It took us a total of 10 calendar days (i.e. Monday to the following Wednesday) to get four visas for Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Kazakstan in Tokyo. This can be done a few days earlier (say 7 or 8) if you’re prepared and quick enough on the metro.
Keep the following tips in mind when getting visas here:
Plan, Plan, Plan. Specifically the order that you will be traveling to these countries, the number of entries desired, etc. Central Asian visas are date specific (i.e. 1-Sept-2012 to 31-Oct-2012 for 1 entry with a maximum time in country of 30 days).
Visas for these consulates normally take a week to process (up to two in the case of Uzbekistan), which would mean a month or so for all four. However, you can call ahead and explain that you’re getting all four and kindly ask if you can leave a copy of your passport instead of the original with the embassy. This way you can apply for all of them in parallel, cutting it down to a week. The consulates of Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan were happy to do this for us, but Kazakstan said they would have to keep our original passports.
If you apply in parallel you should do it in the following order: Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan (which are a few blocks from each other in Nakameguro) and Tajikistan and Kazakstan (which are a few blocks from each other in Roppongi).
Pick them up in the opposite order. When we picked up our passport from the Kazak embassy, we dropped off our passports at the Tajik embassy. The next day we went back and picked them up from there and then went to the Kyrgyz and Uzbek embassies (who put the visas in on the spot).
When speaking to the the person from the embassy and using English, please be very polite. Most of the staff speak Japanese as their second language, so you might be getting the ambassador (him|her)self!
Most of the embassies expect ‘bank transfers’ for payment. This is quite common in Japan and can be done at any bank ATM machine (you can pay in cash and it is directly deposited into the consulate’s account). The catch here, however, is that the transfer option is only available in the Japanese language ATM menu. If you don’t read Japanese kindly ask someone there (the guard, etc) to help you or bring someone who does with you. Keep the transaction receipt as this is what you will present to the consulate for proof of payment.
Some consulates expect the payment receipt at time of application and some expect it at pickup time.
Emails to any of these consulates routinely go unanswered; call instead.
Beijing is the only place in East Asia with a Turkmenistan consulate. The next closest one is in New Delhi or in the other ‘stans.
For a tourist visa, a LOI from an approved Turkmenistan travel agency is needed. We used Ayan Travel who were able to arrange a LOI in 9 business days (they applied on a Monday and it was sent to us from them the following Thursday evening). NOTE: The Beijing consulate does NOT require the original LOI (i.e. a faxed/emailed copy is OK), unlike Moscow, etc.
Cost for Americans: 10 day single entry is $35 for normal service (one week) or $55 for express (3 day/weekend) service in USD only. They will keep your passport the entire time (so have a copy for yourself as that is against Chinese law). There is a Bank of China down the road on Tian Ze Lu that can exchange RMB for USD. Keep in mind the consulate is closed on Wednesdays (and at 12:00 (at least on the door), not 13:00 as listed on the website). We went with the express option and dropped ours off Friday morning at 11:30am and it was ready Monday at 15:00.
The GBAO permit (to see the eastern half of the country and Pamirs) cost is included in the base visa cost, but you MUST ask for it separately (in person and in your processing cover letter). If you don’t have a cover letter they will give you one to copy for the request at the consulate. Make sure you come with TWO copies of your visa paperwork (and associated photos). When picking up the visa they will make you sign that the visa is correct. NOTE: the actual dates, etc are handwritten so be sure to triple check!
Cost for Americans: ¥9000 JPY (8000 for the visa + 1000 processing fee) for a 30 day single entry visa. This is paid via wire transfer (ATM) with receipt DUE AT APPLICATION TIME.
A Kyrgyzstan visa is very straight forward and simple to get in Tokyo.
Cost for Americans: ¥8000 JPY for a 30 day single entry tourist visa, payable by wire transfer (ATM) with receipt due at pickup time. NOTE: The consul will tell you that you don’t need a Kyrgyz visa if you have a multi-entry Kazak visa. Getting a M-E Kazak visa is a bit of a pain and as this is a new policy as of July 2012 (which means that border enforcement might be iffy), we just got a straight visa from Kyrgyzstan (costs more, but potentially less hassle).
The Uzbek consulate in Tokyo unfortunately does not have a usable website (in Japanese, let alone English). You have to fill out your information at the website below, print it out, and give it to the consulate. Make sure that you mark Tokyo as the place of visa issuance. Under Occupation ‘Representatives of business groups and persons, engaging in individual enterprise’ is what most folks put (I’m an engineer damn it!)
Cost for Americans: ¥16000 JPY for a 30 day tourist visa (maximum) is super pricey, so make every day count. You can ask for as many entries as you wish without a LOI (but be specific (i.e. 2, 4, 7, etc); putting ‘multiple’ will mean a LOI will be required). Note that this is paid in cash at the time of visa pickup!
Farflungistan 