We had organised a driver to drive us to the nearby oasis town of Turpan, formely an important stop-over for Silk Road traders. We met Ali, our Uygur driver who in broken English managed to communicate his dislike of the Chinese authorities and pretty much everything else Chines. He drove us the 200km to Turpan and for a small fee extra also accompanied us to the nearby sights of the ruined Silk Road towns of Jiaohe adn Gaochang. Not a lot remains and the important artefacts have all been removed to the national museum in Urumqi that I visited yesterday. STill the fact that some of the mud-brick buildings have survived to some degree in the dry desert is a testament to their creators. Both sights were a couple of square kilometres in size and this meant that we were able to lose the tour groups and go "off piste" and climb around the ruins. This was probably illegal but no-one seemed to care much and was far more rewardig as we explored every nook and cranny feeling every bit the archeologist!

It was way to hot we decided and lunch at a traditional Uygur restaurant with Ali was a welcome break from the heat. We ate the traditional Uygur and Central Asian staple of Laghman (noodles, meat and vegetables) and washed it down with local Kwas beer. That afternoon we headed to the Flaming mountain so called because of its rippled brown/red surface that looks like it is burning in the hot sun. We refused to pay for the privilige of being herded into a coomplex where we could ride camels and do all sorts of tacky Chinese tour group things and so admired it from the side of the road... for free and with just as good a view if not better.

We carried on to the village of Tuyoq where we were surprised and angry to find that we had to pay for the privilege of visiting. I'd never known a village could charge people to walk on public roads but here that was exactly what they were doing and we got shouted at several times as we tried to enter from several different angles. At one entrance the man spoke enough English to say that the reason we couldn't go in was because and important Muslim man had died. I would have accepted this had it not been for the fact that a 30 yuan ticket seemed to allow you to ignore this fact. We avoided the view point where again you had to pay and walked on 100m to another one where you didn't. As we tried to walk back through the graveyard we were told that we were infidels and couldn't walk through the Muslim graveyard. We obeyed sullenly and shortly afterwards we left, fuming. We'd seen enough and hadn't paid for the privilege.

We returned to Turfan and chilled in a bar. It had been over 30 degrees and was still hot as we made our way back to the hotel at midnight. I was thankful that we had a room with air con. This happens to be the hottest place in China and they weren't lying!