3rd lowest point on Earth

Trip Start Aug 03, 2010
1
107
173
Trip End Ongoing


Loading Map
Map your own trip!
Map Options
Show trip route
Hide lines
shadow

Flag of China  , Xinjiang Uygur,
Tuesday, October 4, 2011

The day after the Heavenly Lake on the same Chinese tour group thingy, and still feeling pretty rough, we head for Turpan (03/10/11) – a seemingly very Middle Eastern part of the province. It's about 100 miles southeast from Urumqi, and has the 3rd lowest point on Earth behind the Dead Sea and Lake Assal (wherever that is??!) and is the hottest and driest area in China. 

We’re shown the Turpan city streets which are famously sheltered by endless grapevines and fed from surrounding mountain ranges in an ancient water irrigation system.  The underground canals, channels, wells and reservoirs, which use the natural gradient from the mountains to sustain water flow, are overall about 5 km in length.  It is considered to be one of the great historical projects in China along with the Great Wall. 

The Basin in Turpan is famous for its high quality fruit, mainly grapes, because of the hot and dry conditions everything is farmed in
Nice to see some wind farms in China
Nice to see some wind farms in China
.  It’s all interesting for me anyway ;-).

We then visit ancient city ruins of Gaochang, which dates back to the 1st century BC and the fire or flaming mountains in the Mutou Valley.  Both of which were pretty impressive – worth joining a Chinese tour group to visit them haha.

It was funny though, the day after seeing the flaming mountains, we are watching Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon (good movie btw) and I’m noticing that most of the places filmed in the movie, I have now actually been to... Beijing’s Forbidden City, Sichuan for the Bamboo Sea scenes and also now to Xinjiang where they shoot the desert scenes and showed the flaming mountains that I had just visited the day before near Turpan. 
Slideshow

Use this image in your site

Copy and paste this html: