Drunk on a Kazak Horse

The view from my hotel room!

Strong spirits, fermented horse milk, a dead sheep and liver kebabs make for an interesting meal.  This combination seems to make you think that heading off through the Kazak scenery with a random chap that you've just met (who has a horse) is a good idea.

Arrival in Nanshan

We had a great day today. A bus picked us up in the morning to take us to the Nanshan observatory.  I saw the largest ground-hog in the World.  And lots of eagles.  We clambered around on the telescope for a while and then continued up into the mountains for lunch with a local family that has known Dick Manchester for 15+ years.  They killed a sheep specially for us and we ate it in their yurt.  Then I got drunk.

Preparing to climb on the telescope

The view from the telescope

Dick walking to lunch

Lunch time!

The freshly killed sheep

The owners of the yurt

Inside our yurt

The "ceiling"

My beautiful horse

Back in Changji

A hole for the largest ground hogs that I've ever seen

Dinner in a hui restaurant in Changji

A journey to where-ever I am

I'm somewhere near Urumqi in the YuanLin Hotel.  Apparently I am a Dear Distinguished Guest.  I even got to stand on a red carpet at Urumqi airport waiting to pick up my bag.  We arrived into Beijing last night after a spectacular flight (I thought it was spectacular, but Sha felt ill for most of it).  I have never seen such colours.  The water over the Gulf of Carpentaria was turquoise.  The sunset as we flew around the thunder clouds into Shanghai was bright red.  It was raining heavily in Beijing.

Sha met her mother and then Jingbo, Dick, Barbera and I headed off to the "airport hotel".  hmmm .... apparently it was 7km away, but it took us over an hour.  We first had to argue with about four taxi drivers.  Then we were charged Y300 for the journey.  Then we had to wait for ages before checking in.  Oh well ... the hotel was great.  The toilet didn't work.  The smoke-detector was on the floor and the pillow was filled with sand.  Unfortunately the hotel had a rule that "guests are forbidden to engage in feudalistic superstition" which was a bit disappointing.

Anyway, didn't have to wait long as we fell asleep around 2am and had to get up at 6am.  The flight to Urumqi was smooth and, even though I didn't have a window seat, could catch glimpses of the Great Wall as we flew out of Beijing and the snow-covered mountains in Xingjiang.  Very spectacular.

My current hotel has an orchard and is "a haven of peace and happiness".   I can go to the front hall for:

"Preservation: Your preservation is kept at any moment"

and I must "keep the floor clean, smuggling, whoring and the like".  I'm not sure if there is a word missing or not there.

Anyway, if I get it wrong (either by smuggling or by not smuggling) then "If serious violations happen, guests could be deprived out."

Off to the conference now.  Urumqi is on Beijing time and so the conference starts at 4pm!

I like China.