Kanasi (Lake Kanas), the most expensive tourist place in China

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.

Tashgurkan and the Karakoram Highway

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.