15-Jul-2006 -- N43 E84, Bayanbulak Grassland, Xinjiang, China

The point locates about 3.5km away from the nearest road - G217 national highway. The 1089km long "national" highway is just a stony path in this section. The way crosses mountains, and it was interrupted due to road slides so we had to push the cars over the stones when I came to Bayanbulak two days ago. Anyway it's only 10km from the village, so I could put the backpack in the village, hitched a local truck to the nearest roadside (N42.58'19" E84.1'20"), and took the short tour.

I crossed two fences along the way. It seems I walked over a range, but there's no sheep, cow or any people in this season. After 50 minutes I got the point. It's about 2500m in altitude above sea level. I could see the snow mountains very clearly.

It was not a very happy walking. The scene was definitely beautiful. On the grassland there were many wild flowers. Some brooks hided in the grass until you found them 5 meters away. The water flowing from the mountains was clean and sweet... The problem was, in this dry hot summer, every minute walking on the grassland, there were always more than 10 huge flies around me. Their noise drove me crazy. Sometimes I killed all of them near the brook, but one minute later I was rounded by another lot.

Here’s the blog post for the tour Chinese / English

Coordinator's Note: This visit is classified incomplete because it does not meet the photo requirements of the project.