新疆 Day 5 - Walnuts and Wildflowers

We drove all morning until we reached some place in the middle of nowhere. Taking a shuttle bus into the valley, we were dropped off at the start of a trail. It’s a mountain that grows wild walnuts, valuable for Chinese medicine. We hiked up a long trail of very steep steps all the way to the top of the mountain. There were apricot trees all along the way, so our hike was fragrant and accompanied by the lazy buzzing of insects. At the top of the trail, one can look down upon the entire valley, which is actually a spot where a mountain range splits in two like a Y-shape, creating a little triangular dip in between.

Yay! I survived the hike!

The view wasn’t that nice, I suppose, because the sky was hazy and the mountain was not as beautiful as the other we had seen. Interestingly, the wildflowers we spotted growing by the path were almost identical to those we have in Canada. I think the latitude is around the same, and many of the plants are remarkably similar. They are often bigger though, and more lush, but I'm not really sure why.  

On our trek back down, which was much easier than the way up of course, we ran into these locals. They were very friendly and open to us taking pictures of them. Aren’t their clothes wonderful? There were also these random tourists who look like Russians but spoke some Chinese dialect, also very happy to pose for us.

happy old ladies

no creeper...

Ominous warning for hikers

On the way down

新疆 Day 5 - Owned.

We stopped for more photography at a village in a valley with a river running through it. I grabbed a new bottle of water from the package as I got out of the car because I had finished my bottle from the morning. We had been buying those 24-packs of bottles from the supermarket since tap water isn’t drinkable and we have no means to boil and store enough for a day. Anyway I had the bottle in my bag while going out along the river with my dad to take pictures. On the way back to the car, I was thirsty, so I took out the bottle of water, opened it, and took a big swallow. It occurred to me that it tasted different from my water this morning, almost sickly sweet, so I immediately spat out the second mouthful. I remembered suddenly that this was supposedly a brand new bottle, an yet there had been no clicking sound of the seal breaking when I twisted it open.

“HOMGSH DAD THIS IS LAKE WATER T___T”

My dad had a sip to taste it, and we compared it to the water in his bottle, and began to laugh uncontrollably. Walking back to the car after emptying the bottle on the rocks, I kind of started retching and feeling a little gross, but maybe it was just a psychological effect. I spat out the taste as well as I could, and my dad told everybody back at the car what had happened. The guide died of laughter, and the driver told us he’d probably put the filled bottle from the lake back into the water pack thinking it was just a new bottle that had fallen out. 


In other news, Dad's cool picture of the place where this all happened is here.