Final Few Hours around Karakul Lake

Cara was the first member of the group up and about on the second morning. Venturing out with the camera, she attempted to capture hints of sunrise painted across the mountain's snowcaps. Unfortunately, the colors faded rapidly and by the time the rest of the crew poked their groggy heads out the doorflap, the day was clear and blue all around.


The night had been wickedly cold and while yurts are mostly effective at keeping howling winds from entering, the high dome of the interior serves to wick body heat right up and out the vents at the top of the structure. Brrr!

The chill was enough to compel Will to tie a woman's scarf around his head in a vain effort to retain a little warmth. Give that man an eye patch and he'd have made quite the convincing pirate, complete with foul-tempered curses about the weather.

Our goal for the morning was to hike out to the base of one of the nearby mountains and climb up to the snowline. From the edge of Karakul Lake, we could clearly make out glacier formations cutting between the peaks and we were hoping to see one up close.

Sadly, distances were deceptive. After two hours of steady hiking we realized that the edge of the glacier appeared no closer than it had when we first set out. We continued hiking until noon, at which point we scaled a ridge and stopped for a lunch of dried apricots, figs, raisins, and dates. The views were spectacular but too broad for our teeny camera to capture.

We'll leave you with this final image from Karakul Lake, just to show you that not every peak was shrouded in snow. Tomorrow we'll show a few indicators of China's efforts to develop clean energy alternatives that we discovered on the bus ride to Turpan.