View over downtown Vancouver from Stanley Park

Last week I spent a few days in Vancouver with Grace, for business meetings with VCs and start-ups, and to look at some potential investments. Because we were only in town for 4 full days we had a busy schedule, but luckily we also managed to find some time for sightseeing.

View over Coal Harbour and Stanley Park

We stayed at the Delta Suites, a nice all-suite hotel in downtown Vancouver. Originally we had planned to book a room at the Wedgewood Hotel, but because they did not have free wifi in the rooms I decided not to stay there (as regular readers may know, if I can avoid staying in a hotel where I need to pay for Internet I will do so. For me Internet is the same as water or electricity, and you also don’t pay for that). Delta Suites turned out to be a great choice, with big suites and in a very central location.

View from terrace of the Delta Suites hotel

I booked the best room I could find online, so we ended up in a suite on the top floor with access to the executive club. This may seem like a small thing, but if you have a huge jet lag (there is a 15 hour time difference between China and Vancouver) it’s great to be able to get some food or coffee at any time of the day. The club also had a balcony overlooking the city where we normally had our breakfast. Nice and quiet, much better than in a crowded breakfast room.

Sea plane departing in Vancouver harbour

Upon arrival we walked over to Canada Place to look at the boats on the harbour and the sea planes taking off. Then we went to buy a local SIM card, but that turned out to be quite hard. Canada is a great country, but it’s not necessarily service oriented. Several shops refused to help us and it took me a while to figure out why (they need to register the number, which takes times, and don’t want to do that for pre-paid numbers that are only used for a short time). Eventually I just changed my story and said that I needed a number for a couple of months and that I wanted to pay per month, and that was possible.

View from White Rock to Vancouver

But then the sales lady at the shop made a mistake and registered a normal SIM instead of a micro SIM (despite her checking my phone in advance to see which one I needed), which I could not use in my 2nd phone (a Galaxy S3). She said she could not change it and then bluntly refused to give me back my money, because “pre paid cards are non-refundable”. The fact that I asked her for a micro SIM instead of a normal one was unimportant to her. When we asked for the manager he immediately said that the computer system was down, so he could not change the SIM card, but of course that was BS. He just did not want to help. Eventually he agreed to cut the SIM card so it would fit and luckily that worked. But this was not a good first impression. All countries have its pros and cons I guess…

After an early dinner we went to bed before 11 PM already because jet lag started to kick in. I slept well and got up around 3:30 AM to catch up on emails. Because I had been interviewed by 2 Dutch publications (Elsevier magazine and the Financieele Dagblad) my email box was pretty full and I answered most of the people that I would get back to them in a week or so. During the trip I would get about 40 emails from companies that wanted to work with me after reading one or both interviews, a new record for me.

Kitsilano Beach with downtown Vancouver in the background

From Monday-Thursday we had a lot of meetings, and generally I have a good impression about business culture and start-ups in Canada. People for sure seem to enjoy life here a lot, very different from Shanghai. The first meeting of the day often did not start until 9:30 or 10 AM, and I don’t think we had any meetings after 4 PM.

Start-ups work hard here as well, but people do more than just work. In most business conversations things like sports or weekend activities came up, something you normally don’t touch upon in Shanghai. Also lawyers don’t work very hard here it seems, we had a bad experience with one of our lawyers who just unexpectedly turned off his phone for a few days. In China that would be impossible to imagine, but in Canada people accept it – or have to accept it.

Granville Island, Vancouver

The British Columbia government gives quite some incentives to angel investors and start-ups. In a way it reminded me of what the Singapore government is doing. Because of that there seems to be a lot of angel investment activity, but not that many follow up VC rounds (yet?).

As a city Vancouver exceeded all my expectations. Its location is superb, in the middle of nature and with clean, fresh air. The city is surrounded by water and mountains, meaning that there are beautiful views almost everywhere. Because of the relatively mild climate it’s one of those places where you can ski in the morning and sail in the afternoon (there are 3 ski areas within 20 minutes of downtown Vancouver, and Whistler is just 120 km away).

Horseshoe Bay, Vancouver

We were lucky with the weather, with blue skies and sunshine, and temperatures between 25-30 degrees Celsius during the whole trip. Great weather to go running, which is what I did of course. Among others I ran around Stanley Park, an island (actually now a peninsula) in Vancouver bay. This island has a seawall surrounding it, with a pathway on which you can run or bike. I went very early in the morning and saw the sun rise while running, it was beautiful.

Stanley Park, Vancouver

The Stanley Park run itself is one of the nicest city runs you can imagine: you run all around the island with the water on your right and forests and partly a massive rock formation on your left. Especially the west coast was impressive and I did not really feel tired despite the relatively long run (around the island is about 9 km, but I also ran along the harbour for a total of 14.5 km).

View to Stanley Park from the Royal Vancouver Yacht Club

We had a couple of nice dinners in Vancouver, where I mainly ate local seafood and tried out some of the British Columbia beers and wines. They do have quite good white wines, but they don’t come cheap. I also bought a couple of local bottles that I took home and that I will try here over the next days. At home wines always taste different than while on a trip.

Restaurants on Granville Island

Looking back we should have stayed one or two days longer so we could have seen a bit more of the local sights. And if I had been smarter I should have booked my trip a week later, so I could have participated in the GROW conference as well (everybody was talking about it during the trip). But we had a great time anyway, I learned a lot and have seen a lot of things that I wanted to see. I hope to be back soon!

View from Lions Bay

Some more pictures of the trip to Vancouver are here in a set on Flickr.

Last week I got my new laptop, a retina screen Macbook Pro. It’s the 4th Macbook Pro that I have and I was happy to get finally get it, because my old MBP was almost falling apart. The problem is that I take my laptop with me everywhere, from the desert to mountain tops and from beaches to sailing trips, so my computers wear down quickly. Next to that I hardly ever shut them down and I always have 20-30 tabs open in my browser. Not smart, I know.

A few months ago my computer became slower and slower and the hard disk started to have some problems (the HDD is the weakest point in Apple laptops). But I knew that a new MBP would come out, so I decided to tweak my computer a bit and wait for the new one instead of buying another ‘old’ MBP first. I assumed the new MBP would come out in March, but eventually it was June until it was announced. And even then it was hard to order it from China, especially if you wanted the retina screen. Anyway, I managed to survive, but barely.

My new laptop has a 750 GB flash drive instead of a hard disk, so the problems that I always have with HDDs will be over for good (I hope). I am quite happy that I finally have some more space on my laptop, on my old one I was constantly close to the 500 GB data limit (I could have bought a larger HDD, but decided to wait for a larger flash drive).

So far I am quite happy with this new laptop, it’s super fast (I ordered a top of the line one), battery life is pretty good and the screen is amazing. I now already can’t go back to my old MBP anymore.

But getting the laptop to work was a major hassle. I started by installing my time machine copy on my new computer, but for some reason it did not work. It was so bad that my laptop did not start up again… I went to the local ‘fake’ apple store on Hongmei Lu (Apple Pie), where the guys installed Mountain Lion for me, but after putting my time machine data on it again (which took about 4 hours) it again failed to start up. No idea why, and because time machine is pretty much a black box to me, I couldn’t do much to solve it.

That means that I needed to copy all my data manually, including all the settings. And that was a serious hassle, which took several days. One reason is that I could not connect my old laptop’s Firewire port to the Thunderbolt port on my new laptop, so I could not just copy from one computer to the other. I went to the official Apple store on Huaihai Lu where they sold me a USD 50 cable for this (I explained why I needed it), but even they did not know that the new MBP with a Thunderbolt port can’t copy data in target mode from a Firewire port. Apple is a great company, but if you always buy their latest products things never work smoothly from the start.

So the cable was worthless and I had to use an external HDD to copy. But because my old HDD had some problems certain files were corrupted and they caused the (already very slow) copy process to stop. What to do? Luckily Joop Dorresteijn helped me out by using Terminal to copy the files. In that case the process continues even though one or more files don’t work. Thanks a lot Joop!

Anyway, now my laptop is finally ready to use (after almost a week, just in time for its first international trip tonight) and I am very happy with it. It will be with me almost 24/7 for the next 12-24 months, so I hope it won’t disappoint me.

Since we came back from Holland almost 3 weeks ago Scott started his swimming lessons. He had a few last year already, but at 3 years old it was more fun and play than really swimming. So this summer we decided to hire a private instructor who comes to our house 3 times a week to teach Scott how to swim.

I did not expect too much progress because 4 years old is still quite young to learn to swim, but in 3 weeks he learned to crawl relatively well without using his inflatable armbands. And he loves to be in the water. Partly because it’s much better than to be outside in the Shanghai heat, but also because he likes to be under water. He spends most of the time now diving to the bottom or making underwater summersaults. He is totally unafraid. But we still need to watch him closely: he is now overconfident and doesn’t see the risks involved yet.

This morning Grace took a couple of short videos. A 12-second one I uploaded to YouTube and embedded above in this post, it shows Scott while he swims to me. If you can’t see it, this is the YouTube link. Grace uploaded a longer clip to her Tudou account as well, you can see Scott swimming here.

On Tuesday night we were invited to a winemaker’s dinner at BLOC in Shanghai with Matt Evans, who makes wines in both New Zealand and in California. The interesting thing about Matt is that he started out as an investment banker at Morgan Stanley, but changed his career around 2003 to follow his passion and become a winemaker. Because I love wines and am also looking at doing something with wine in the future I was happy that I was invited to join the small dinner with him.

BLOC is a newly opened contemporary Eastern European restaurant on 139 Changle Lu. Chef/owner Mike Solovay told me during the dinner that the place just opened 2 weeks ago (no wonder I had not heard about it before), but there were quite a lot of people already despite the approaching typhoon. Mike is from Chicago, but his parents originally came from Ukraine, and this is the kind of food that he liked to eat when he grew up. And I can tell you, the food is great. The portions were huge, but the food was so good that I finished all 4 courses and could hardly walk down the stairs afterwards.

An investment banker friend of mine had organized the small dinner (as it turned out he had been a colleague of Matt Evans at Morgan Stanley in the 90s) and invited me because he knows my interest in wine. Although Matt lives in New Zealand, the wines during the evening were not New Zealand ones but from California. Specifically, they were from Elke Vineyards in the Anderson Valley (2 different Pinot Noirs), from Baccharis in Mendocino (a Sauvignon Blanc) and from Halcon in the Yorkville Highlands (a Syrah).

The wines had been paired with the food and I felt the combinations were pretty good. We started with a fried goat cheese salad with strawberry balsamic vinaigrette. The chef at BLOC had put some caramelized sugar on top of the salad which gave it a very special taste. We had the Sauvignon Blanc with this, which fit well. I am a huge fan of the dry but fruity New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc and this California one was of course very different. To be honest, because I now only drink NZ Sauvignon Blancs I probably would not have guessed that this was a Sauvignon Blanc as well. It was a very nice bottle and it fit well with the dish, but it’s probably not a wine that I would buy myself.

The next course was a salmon baked in bread crumbs and herbs. Normally when I order salmon I tend to go for a white wine, but for this dish it was paired with a light Pinot Noir. It was a great combination, especially because the salmon had a coating of bread crumbs. I liked the Elke Vineyards Pinot Noir a lot, it’s relatively light but has a beautiful flavor (incl. some smoke that you could smell, because of nearby forest fires in the harvest year!).

As a comparison we also tried a one year older Elke Vineyards Pinot Noir, which was very different. I actually liked this one even better because it had a deeper flavor and seemed to have a darker color. I explained to Matt that for red wines I generally am more of a Cabernet Sauvignon fan than of Pinot Noir, which probably explains my preference. At home I hardly ever open a Bourgogne wine or a new world Pinot Noir, I mainly go for a Cab if I drink a red wine. Maybe I should actually try some more Pinot Noirs once the height of summer is over in Shanghai, this wine (and several NZ Pinot Noirs that I tasted during our trip in January) was so good that I would not mind buying a few bottles and drinking them instead of Cabs.

After the salmon we had a cider glazed pork loin on top of a potato pancake. A very nice combination! At first I decided only to eat half of it because I was quite full already, but in the end I realized that without thinking I had eaten the whole pork loin. Maybe the combination with the wine was the culprit, because this was once again a good pairing. Matt had decided to open a 2009 Halcon Syrah with this course, which was an excellent combination. Very different from the Pinot Noirs, and it was nice to see and taste the difference. Also a nice wine to buy a few bottles from.

We ended the night with a dish that the chef titled “Red Hot Chili Chocolate Lava Torte”, a chili infused chocolate cake filled with molten hot chocolate, combined with ice cream. Heavenly! And guess what, the Syrah fit very well with this dish as well. Normally I don’t really order wine with a desert, except for an occasional desert wine, but this red wine paired very well with the hot chocolate. So I decided to have an extra glass of course!

I am not sure what time we left the restaurant, but I know we were the last guests and that outside the first rain and wind of the typhoon had arrived. We had a great evening and I learned a lot about wines and wine making, and especially about some of the differences in wine making between the California and New Zealand. Matt, thanks and we’ll stay in touch! Also thanks to Michael Gaudette of Golden Gate Grapes (site still under construction it seems) for providing the wines for the dinner.

BLOC: 2/F, 139-19 Changle Lu,长乐路139-19号2楼, phone 021-6404 6685, http://blocshanghai.com/

And in case you are wondering, there are no pictures with this blog post because I was so busy talking and tasting wines that I totally forgot to take out my phone and take some photos.

(Edit Aug. 9, 2012: For update on what happened when the typhoon hit, see the end of this post)

We didn’t have a real typhoon in quite some time in Shanghai, the last big one that hit Shanghai directly was back in 2005. But there is a good chance that tomorrow typhoon Haikui will hit land just south of the city, meaning that some extreme weather might be on the way.

The city already evacuated 200,000 people in coastal areas and tonight at 9 pm, some extra measures will come into effect according to a government directive (translation: Shanghaiist):

1. All outdoor mass activities to be stopped.
2. All parks, tourist destinations and recreational parks to be shut.
3. All summer and extra-curricular classes to be stopped, but teachers to report to work as usual (to take care of students who have come to class because they were unaware of the latest regulations)
4. All cruise activities on the Huangpu River and Suzhou Creek to be stopped.
5. All one-day tours to be postponed to another date.
6. All outdoor construction work to be stopped.
7. No ships to be allowed out of port (unless on emergency public affairs). All ships outside to return to port as soon as possible.

Let’s see what will happen, but if the storm should indeed hit Shanghai I will stay home tomorrow!

Update: The tropical storm landed about 100 km south of Shanghai and caused heavy wind and rain. Around 12 PM most people were advised to leave their offices and go home. In our compound several trees fell down and the roads were flooded. Downtown Shanghai things were much worse, with both the Suzhou Creek and the Huangpu River flowing over their banks and causing flooding in downtown Shanghai. Several people were wounded by falling glass or even airconditioning units, and in Nanjing one person died when a tree fell over. This morning (Thursday) everything was fine again, no more rain, still some wind but not a lot, and I even saw the sun again. 

View over Urumqi from Hongshan Park

After traveling to the far west and later to the very north of Xinjiang we decided to end our trip with a visit to the capital Urumqi. I slept most of the 45 minute flight from Kanasi and woke up during the descent above the desert a few minutes before landing in Urumqi. At the airport I got my backpack and we then waited for a taxi. It took a few minutes before one arrived and then we were off to our downtown hotel. The driver refused to use his meter, but the RMB 70 that he proposed seemed reasonable considering the distance from the airport to the city.

Room in Hong Fu Hotel, Urumqi

We arrived at the Hong Fu Hotel about 30 minutes later, it was by far the best hotel we had this trip. And relatively cheap, I think we paid something like RMB 700 per room. Both our rooms were at the top floor so we had a good view over the city.

View over Urumqi to the north from Hong Fu Hotel

After checking in we went for a walk, we were quite hungry after just a simple lunch at a local nomad family in the Hemu valley. We opted for a muslim restaurant and were surprised to even see pork on the menu! People were drinking alcohol as well, so it was immediately clear that muslims here were not as fanatic about their religion as in some other parts of Xinjiang. It probably also has to do with the fact that about 80% of the Urumqi population is now Han Chinese and therefore likely non-muslim.

The food was nice and prices here were back to normal again after the heavily inflated costs of everything in Kanasi. After a nice spicy dinner (partly Sichuan food) with some cold beers we went for a walk around the city. In Urumqi Beijing time is being used and like in the rest of Xinjiang the time is therefore at least 2 hours off from the real time, so it only gets dark after 10 PM.

Entrance of Renmin Park, Urumqi

We first walked to Renmin Park (People’s Park) along some treelined streets. The streets reminded me a bit of the French Concession in Shanghai, but also of some of the smaller streets in Beijing from 10-12 years ago. It felt a bit like a time warp, it was relatively quiet on the streets and there were not many cars around either, exactly like the old days in Beijing. Because of that I started to like the city right away, but I also realized that this is not the Urumqi that it used to be: the muslims are a minority now in their own region and the old town is long gone. It was just a normal Chinese city, but one where it’s not as busy yet as on the east coast of China.

Renmin Park, Urumqi

Renmin Park reminded me a lot of Beijing parks, with some classic Chinese buildings, lots of attractions for kids, and of course the obligatory Mao quote on a statue. People in the park seemed quite happy to be there. Lots of them were dancing at several of the squares and others were chatting with their friends on one of the many grass fields.

Renmin Park, Urumqi

The weather was very nice: sunny and not too warm (about 28 degrees around 7 pm), so perfect for a walk. The air is very dry because Urumqi is surrounded by deserts, so it’s much nicer than the sticky, humid air in Shanghai.

From Renmin Park we walked to Hongshan Park (Red Hill Park), which is located just 200 meters to the north of Renmin Park. Hongshan Park is built on a hill with a temple and a pagoda on top of it, and from there you have a great view over most of the city.

Pagoda in Hongshan Park, Urumqi

After the walk we decided to have a beer to cool down a bit, and we ended up at Fubar. This bar, located on the west side of Renmin Park in a street lined with clubs and bars, is supposedly the only western bar in Urumqi. And indeed, when you come in you immediately feel that you entered a different world. The bar reminded me a bit of the old Minder’s Cafe on Sanlitun South Street (which was demolished around 2004), with a bar, some high and low tables and mixed clientele of locals and foreigners. We had a couple of nice beers, first a German Weizenbeer, then a black Sinkiang beer (local beer), and finally  some nice dark Belgium beers.

Gary and I discussed a lot of things while every now and then glancing at the Olympics on one of the screens in the bar. This was the only place in Urumqi where I saw some other foreigners, and the first time that I saw non-Chinese in about 3 days. Not that I am so keen on seeing Westerners, but it just hardly ever happens to me that I only see Chinese for more than a day.

After the beers we decided to take a taxi back to the hotel, but that was a bit harder than we thought. It was impossible to find a taxi on the streets, even after midnight. Urumqi just doesn’t have enough taxis it seems, and that’s likely caused by the fact that they are too cheap. The price starts at RMB 6, which is half the price of Shanghai, meaning that supply and demand are probably not in equilibrium. That’s what you get when prices are set instead of determined by the market… At first we wanted to walk back to the hotel, but because it was still quite warm we eventually took a black cab (an illegal taxi) that was willing to drive us to our hotel for RMB 15. On the way we saw lots of people waiting for taxis, I felt bad for them.

Lots of places sell naan or kebab on the streets of Urumqi

After a good sleep we had breakfast in the hotel and then I went for a walk while Gary did some emails. I had about an hour before we had to go to the airport, and I walked around some of the smaller streets around the hotel. Here you could still feel the muslim influence, with many people baking naan bread in ovens on the street and lots of fruit stalls full of grapes and other fruit. I loved the walk and it was a pity I had to cut it short to catch my plane.

Roadside fruit stalls are all over Urumqi

At the hotel it was once again very hard to find a taxi, but just before we decided to rent a car with driver from the hotel a taxi dropped off some guests at the hotel, and we were able to take that taxi. At the airport I checked in and had a coffee with Gary (he had to go to Beijing and his flight was a bit later) before boarding a plane back to Shanghai.

I had an amazing time in Xinjiang, we did so many things in less than a week. I am happy I took this trip just in time to still see some parts of the Old City in Kashgar. The nature in this province is amazing, I have seen a lot of the world over the years but the scenery in Xinjiang was among the most beautiful sights that I have seen on this planet, especially in the area along the Karakoram Highway. If you live in China and have some time I would certainly suggest you to check out Xinjiang as well. Kanasi is probably not as interesting because of the military and the commercialization, but the area around Kashgar is something you should not miss. And if you have to change planes in Urumqi you may as well spend a day in that city as well, it’s quite pleasant even though there are hardly any sights nor historical buildings in the city.

This was the last post in a series of 4 articles about my trip to Xinjiang in July 2012. The others posts are here (Kashgar), here (Karakoram Highway) and here (Kanasi/Lake Kanas). Some of the pictures that I took can be seen in this set on Flickr. 

After a few days in Kashgar and on the Karakoram Highway we decided to go from the far west of China to the most northern part of Xinjiang. We had heard that in that area, the border region with Russia, Kazakhstan and Mongolia, nature would be amazing as well, so we wanted to check it out.

The Kanasi (Lake Kanas) area is not easy to reach, but a lot easier than just a few years ago. Actually, in the only China Lonely Planet that I have (the 1998 edition), Kanasi was described as being closed to foreigners and the only way to reach it was by taking an unpaved road for hours and hours from Altai. Times have changed though, 5 years ago an airport opened about 1.5 hour drive from Lake Kanas (the major tourist spot in the area) and there are regular flights from there to Urumqi.

View over the southern end of Lake Kanas

From Kashgar we took a plane to Urumqi, stayed there overnight and then took a morning flight to Kanasi. Boarding the flight to Kanasi was not as easy as I had hoped: for some reason my name appeared on the boarding pass as marcmarc/vanderchijs instead of marc/vanderchijs, and the bureaucratic lady checking the boarding passes refused to let me through. I guess the recent hijacking of a flight to Urumqi may have made them more alert, because I have traveled all over China with misspelled names many times.

Trying to solve this problem was not very easy, and I had to get back to the check-in area. One person referred me to another, and that person had no clue how to solve it either. I was ready to just buy a new ticket in order to get on the plane, but decided to first ask for the manager. That’s often the only way to solve problems in China, and this time it worked as well. I explained the manager the problem and that I was on the flight with a friend who was already waiting to board, and that my luggage was on board as well. That last part is important, because it means they would have to unload all luggage to search for my bag, something that takes time and might delay the flight. The guy was pragmatic and just manually changed my name on the boarding pass and put a chop on it. I then ran back to the long security check line, walked around it to the front (with people shouting angrily at me, and me completely ignoring them), and managed to get to the plane just in time to board.

Kanasi airport, located in the middle of nowhere

The flight was short and uneventful, less than 50 minutes with a beautiful view. But even though it was short it was quite expensive, the first hint of what was to come…

Upon arrival at Kanasi airport we had planned to take a taxi to our hotel, which was located next to Lake Kanas. Problem was, there are no taxis in Kanasi. But of course entrepreneurial locals were willing to drive us to the entrance gate of the Kanasi National Park (not our hotel!) for the princely sum of RMB 800. We managed to get that down to RMB 600 (about USD 100), which is still outrageously expensive for a one hour drive.

Lunch in a yurt

We had lunch in a yurt close to the entrance of the national park, RMB 170 for some simple local food with milk tea and some fermented horse milk (which tastes as bad as it sounds). Then we bought tickets to get into the park, which cost us RMB 230 per person (USD 36). This is just the basic price, if you want to visit some of the attractions (like climb up to a view point) you will need to pay additional money each time. I don’t mind paying for things, but it felt like a total rip-off to me. Everything is at least a factor 3 more expensive than it would be in the rest of China.

Yurt on the grasslands, most nomads here live in these tents with their extended family

Some more examples: our hotel was RMB 2000 per person per night for a standard room (> USD 300). It wasn’t bad, but for that price you get a 5-star hotel in downtown Shanghai or Beijing. Of course nothing was included in the price, a simple dinner (3 dishes with a beer) came to RMB 900 for 2 persons. This would be max RMB 150-200 in Shanghai.

The river south of Lake Kanas, beautiful colors!

The next day we managed to get a car to drive us from the hotel to the airport with a side trip to the Kazakhstan border (which did not work out, we were stopped at a roadblock where we had to pay RMB 300 per person, and then the soldiers told us that the area was closed to foreigners). We had to pay RMB 3000 for the car trip (which is almost USD 500) for a distance of not more than 150 km. You have no choice, either you pay or you have to find your own way of transportation. If you’re on a tour group it’s not a big deal, because you have your own bus, but individual travelers have to pay top dollars for the experience if they don’t want to be put into buses with other tourists. Anyway, we can afford it and we just paid for it, but it leaves a bad taste in my mouth and I will not recommend anybody to visit the area as an individual.

The river winds from Lake Kanas to the south

That being said, the area itself is beautiful. The nature is stunning, it’s a bit like Switzerland before people starting building houses on the lakes and before roads were built through the forests. Lake Kanas is huge and it has the added attraction of the fact that a monster is sometimes spotted in the lake. We didn’t see the monster and even went for a swim (probably not allowed) in the lake. However, when I got back I heard that the day after we left the monster was seen again. Too bad we missed that one, I don’t believe in monsters and would have liked to see with my own eyes what it could have been.

There is not a lot to do around Lake Kanas and everything is catered to mass Chinese tourism. From the entrance of the national park you have to take a tourist bus to Lake Kanas itself. A typical Chinese experience with a loud tour guide that kept on talking and tourist that tried to take a picture of every tree in the forest that we drove through. When the tour guide finally stopped talking he put on a DVD of Lake Kanas with loud Richard Clayderman music. Time to get out my earplugs!

I did not see any other non-Chinese during our 2 days at the lake. Just thousands of Chinese in tour groups being herded from one sight to another. I had hoped for some good hiking trails, but I could no find them (I am sure they are there, but there are no signs). It would be a great place for mountain biking as well, except for the fact that there are no bikes for rent.

Military police everywhere, I felt watched constantly

But what there is, is a lot of military presence. There are several road blocks on the road between the airport and Kanasi, and the whole area seems to be run by military police. I felt a bit uncomfortable to see them everywhere. They stop cars driving to the national park, they check IDs and passports while entering the park, and at every place with a nice view 2 soldiers or military police are observing the tourists. For me it ruined the experience a bit, nature may be beautiful but with these fellows around it doesn’t feel like a real holiday anymore.

Roadblock close to the Kazakhstan border (taken from the car, they don’t like people taking pictures)

The good thing is that we had a hotel at the lake. Most tourists stay outside the park in hotels, which is probably much cheaper, so after the last groups leave around 8 pm it is suddenly very quiet. Gary and I went for a hike along the lake front around 9:30 PM and did not see a single soul. That walk was actually the highlight of the trip to Kanasi for me, finally no other people nor military around so we could enjoy the natural scenery on our own. There was a boardwalk through the woods along the lake, which was easy to walk on especially when it got dark around 10:30 PM.

Board walk along Lake Kanas

I had expected Kanasi to be a peaceful, quiet place, but except for late evening it was very different from what I had expected. I learned from a Facebook friend that the military moved in a few years ago and started running the place. Since then it’s not a location you want to visit anymore, at least not as an independent traveler interested in seeing nature. Sure, nature is still amazing here, but all the beautiful spots are full of tourists now and you have to pay a lot of money to see them. And as usual in China the tour operators and guides make up stories about unusual rocks formations or islands in the river with a special shape (“they are the footsteps of Zhengis Khan”), and I don’t want to be forced to listen to that.

Lake Kanas after sunset, no monster in sight!

Kanasi was an interesting experience but it’s a tourist trap, and for the cost of going there for a few days you can almost fly to Switzerland and have a similar experience. After one night Gary and I decided we had seen enough and booked a flight back to Urumqi. At the airport we were lucky: we arrived at 3:30 and were told that our flight would be delayed but that we could still get on the 3:40 flight that was boarding already! I don’t think I have ever been in the air within 15 minutes of arriving at an airport. Luckily no extra charge for that.

Hiking in the valley to Hemu village, lots of cows and sheep running around freely

This is part 3 of a series of blog posts about my trip to Xinjiang last week. The 4th (and last) post will be about Urumqi, the capital of Xinjiang province. The first 2 posts were about Kashgar and the Karakoram Highway, I also created a set of some of the pictures that I took during the trip.

Gary and me on a 4200 meter Karakoram Highway pass

The part of the Silk Route from Kashgar in China to Islamabad in Pakistan is called the Karakoram Highway (KKH). We had heard that it’s one of the most beautiful roads in the world, so we decided to get a car with driver and a guide and see this road for ourselves.

Lake Karkul, along the Karakoram Highway

Because we both did not have visa for Pakistan and you can’t get visa on the border anymore (in the past that was possible), we decided to go to Tashgurkan (sometimes also spelled as Tashgorkhan or Tashgorkan), the last village before the Pakistan border. We left Kashgar around 9:30 in the morning, which is very early considering that the real time is actually 3 hours earlier: Beijing time is used in the whole of China, but when you are several thousand kilometers to the west of Beijing you can imagine that nobody follows the official time anymore.

I thought we would drive out of the city right away, but it turned out that we first needed to get a permit from the military to drive the KKH. It was quite busy and very warm inside the military office and people tried to sneak past you in line. After waiting for almost an hour we managed to get the permits – or actually just one permit: it turned out that only Chinese need a permit, but foreigners don’t.

Baking and selling naan bread next to the road

After that it was a smooth ride for the first part of the KKH. We stopped after about an hour at a village to buy some naan (bread) and some fruit. The muslim sellers could not eat themselves during daytime because of Ramadan, but they luckily had no problem selling food to tourists. Also our guide and driver both ate something, despite both of them being muslim. They explained that you don’t have to fast if you travel during Ramadan, but that you need to catch up at a later time. I was glad that at least the driver ate and drank, the KKH is not a road where you want to get into an accident!

Yurts on the grassland next to 7000+ snowcovered mountains

After the village the mountains started and the scenery was stunning. Snow covered mountains (many over 7000 meters) surrounded us, we saw fast flowing rivers, waterfalls, huge grasslands and beautiful lakes. We soon were over 3000 meters, meaning that nothing grows anymore except some grass. Our guide told us that some of the people living here never eat vegetables, I wonder how that’s possible.

Most of the Karakoram Highway in China is in pretty good condition, this is one of the few unpaved stretches

The road was generally quite good, except for some places where the road had been washed away by rivers of melt water and for a few landslides. These landslides happen regularly and you just have to hope that they don’t occur when you are driving there. At the first landslide that we passed (and that had been mostly cleared away) the driver told us that a car had been caught below the falling rocks and mountain of sand. That did not give me a very safe feeling, but of course this is anyway not the safest place on earth.

Fastfood restaurant next to the police check point on the Karakoram Highway

We saw a few more accidents, for example a truck coming down the mountain from Pakistan that braked too late (or which brakes failed?) whose driver was very lucky to survive. His truck slipped off the road in a curve at 4000 meter altitude, but only the cabin hung over the edge. The rest of the truck somehow got stuck in the sand, so it did not slip over the edge.

When we got a bit higher into the mountains we came to a roadblock, where the police checked our IDs. My passport was scrutinized for a few minutes but eventually they let me through. The guide told me not to take any pictures of the police check point, so I did not do so. That’s the sort of thing that can get you into real trouble here.

Checkpoint to the Tajikistan border

Along the road we saw different minorities, and the guide helped us to identify them by their hats. I had not noticed it, but Tajiks wear indeed very different hats from Kazakhs or other ethnic groups. The area where the KKH runs is very close to several countries: We passed by the customs/immigrations building for Tajikistan (we were not allowed to drive to Tajikistan), Afghanistan was less than 50 km away from our hotel (the border has been closed, so no chance to go there either), and of course the KKH crosses into Pakistan.

Stone City in Tashgorkan

Around 5 PM we arrived in Tashgurkan where we had reserved the best hotel in town (Crown Inn). It was indeed clean and it had decent Internet, which is enough for me. We made a walk around town before dinner, which was fun but also a bit tiring because the town is at about 3600 meters altitude. We climbed up to the Stone City (a fort) from the backside, from where we had a great 360 degree view over the valley to all the mountain passes around us.

Grasslands close to Tashgorkan

Tashgurkan was an important stop on the Silk Route because of the grass wetlands surrounding the village. In the old days the camel and horse caravans would stop here to give the animals and people some rest. Nowadays the trucks stop here as well and the grasslands are still used by the nomads who put their yurts and animals there in summer. We had a coke in a very old and dirty bar (the only one in town it seemed), with next to us a group of Tajiks who were getting quite drunk at 6 pm already (which is actually 3 pm Pakistan time!). Well, I guess there is not much else to do here anyway.

Tashgorkan bazaar

After a walk  in the bazaar we headed back to the hotel. Walking through town I realized that there were a lot of blond people around. Not tourist, but locals. Some of the people could have been European, you would not see the difference. Quite amazing actually. On Twitter someone said that one of Alexander the Great’s armies got lost here and that was why people here are blonde. Not sure whether this was serious or not, but it certainly might help to explain this anomaly.

Main Street, Tashgorkan

In the hotel we ordered dinner, which takes about an hour to cook at this altitude. So we relaxed a bit in our rooms and I managed to call my parents via a Skype video call on my phone. The connection wasn’t great, but it was nice that it worked, especially considering the fact that in this part of Xinjiang people can’t make international phone calls (even on local mobile phones all international calls are blocked according to our guide).

After dinner Gary and I discussed some books over a beer (among others The Monk and The Philosopher) and then we headed to bed. I didn’t sleep well despite the fact that it was completely silent at night. I got up at 7:45 to go for a run when it was still pitch black outside. During the run the sun started to rise over the mountains, a beautiful sight. Running itself did not go very easy, partly because of the high altitude and the cold (I was even wearing a hat), and partly because of the semi wild dogs that roamed the streets. I had to stop a few times to make sure they would go away, and at a certain point I had to run through the wetlands because the dogs were in the middle of the road that I had wanted to run on.

Grasslands next to Tashgorkan village

The run showed me the town from a different perspective: at 8 AM most of Tashgorkan was woken up by loudspeakers broadcasting the news. At the hotel you did not hear these, but at 3 strategic locations there were huge loudspeakers that made sure you would wake up. And indeed, a few minutes later the first people started to come out of their houses, looking at me like I was crazy, running around in shorts at this time of the day.

Lake and desert-like mountains on the Karakoram Highway

After a big breakfast we slowly drove back to Kashgar again. We stopped a few times to do a bit of hiking or to take some pictures of the beautiful scenery. Our guide told us that several movies had been filmed here, but only one of them I knew: The Kite Runner. He had actually worked with the production crew, and he showed us some of the locations in Tashgurkan, on the KKH and later in Kashgar itself.

In the afternoon we were back in Kashgar, where we did not want to stay another night, and we decided to take a plane to the far north of Xinjiang (the border of Russia, Mongolia and Kazakhstan). We heard about Lake Kanas (Kanasi) which was supposed to be beautiful as well, so we wanted to check it out of course. It turned out to be a different experience than the KKH, stay tuned for the details in my next post!

This is my second post about the Xinjiang trip with Gary. The first article about our experiences in Kashgar is here. All pictures of this trip can be found here.