MAOS BROTHER AND SEVEN SISTERS

It is very green. Lot of trees. Ever street is lined with poplars. Nothing old here though – except for the fortress on the mountain. Actually it is not a fortress anymore – it is a park and playground. Very dominant are two towers – China Unicom and China telecom. These landmarks can be spotted in every town…

“UTSJ TURFAN 18.2. 1907 Utsj Turfan is the first beautiful city in Chinese Turkistan that I have had the opportunity to see. The whole valley is lovely – where its grand frame of endless mountains, especially two lesser groups of mountains – one in the south and the other to the east and very close to each other. The latter one is particularly picturesque, with its vertical steepness very present. The eastern end of this mountain almost attached to the Chinese fortress with typical straight-line walls, built with pedantic precision gives a sharp contrast to the random silhouette of the mountain. Te Chinese here are few and everything on this side of town looks very neat and orderly - the shops are very well equipped with goods from Russian Turkistan. There is a lot of merchandise from Przevalsk, shipped here through the Bedel Pass and maybe even more from Kashgar. I am surprised by the amount of Russian luxury goods for sale like Russian mirrors, teacups, perfume, glassware that could be found in many stores……. The nearness of the Russian border is evident and every European is considered to be Russian. When passing a crowd one can the whispers “Uruss”…..” AKSU 22.4. 2007 The city of Ushturfan or Wushi in Chinese looks slightly different from other places we have seen. But not much. On the main street one can see a Chinese pagoda – it looks old, but it is not more than 75 years. Built by Mao’s brother (did not know that he had a brother) who was the local boss in the early thirties during the Kuomintang era. He had it built to mark the Chinese supremacy. Not so far away from this spot one can find the tombs of the seven sisters. These sisters fought for Uyghur independence in the 18th century against the ruling Chinese Sing dynasty. The monument itself is almost lined with scarves and different kind of cloths. That is actually not a Muslim tradition – rather a Buddhist one. This whole part of China has been Muslim for 500 years – but still some Buddhist traditions exist. Still today this monument is sensitive for the authorities and very important for the Uyghurs. It is not open for public – officially anyway. A few days rest, and then we continued our riding towards Aksu. The weather was quite pleasant. Riding along a road that was lined by large poplars… until we were surprised by a sandstorm. A heavy one and the only thing were to stop for the day. This was our last riding day anyway, so we decided to put the horses on a truck. This glacier route has not been open since the late forties and animals cannot pass there. Only trekking with special permission is allowed. We put Gustaf, Filip and Carl got a 2000 km ride– with most of our equipment. We continue to Aksu for preparations. This crossing is not without risk – the Hadamuz glacier is not considered an easy one. This was also the point where our cooperation with our Chinese partner Mr. Guo ended. Ending partnerships are not easy anywhere and definitely not here. Why we decided to this is a long story and maybe worth an own chapter. So our stay in Aksu got a bit stretched Finally on Sunday afternoon we are ready for transport to a small coal-mining town by the name of Poechengzi. This is where our crossing is supposed to start.

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