Flirting with Yurts

We left Kashgar on a Monday morning, and our destination - just shy of China's border with Tajikistan - was a place called Karakul Lake. The ride out to Karakul was arduous and not remotely fun at all. The road is under significant reconstruction at various points, requiring our driver to hack it out across rough gravel and dirt track off-and-on for the final third of the journey. Upon arriving, we were greeted with a mass of Chinese day-trippers (who all disappeared long before sunset, leaving a handful of foreign tourists to enjoy the evening together) and crude facilities that included a ramshackle restaurant, a half-dozen yurts, and a hole dug in the dirt to serve as our communal toilet. This first photo was taken from inside our yurt at the lovely view. In the background, a light snowstorm is occluding Muztagh Ata, one of the tallest mountains in China.

At over 7,500 meters above sea level, the tip of Muztagh Ata
pushes up through the cold sky above Karakul Lake. The lake itself sits around 3,600 meters above sea level. Definitely high enough to cause altitude sickness, from which Olivia suffered immediately upon our arrival. Michael grew ill halfway through our second day at Karakul, though it is unclear whether it was truly altitude-related, as he remained ill well after after returning to the relative lowlands of Kashgar.

Although we experienced brief periods of cloudy/overcast/nasty weather, when the clouds finally blew away the sky was so clear that during late afternoon, if you looked directly up, the blueness of the sky had a night-time darkness to it that was a little eerie. It sure made for some vivid-blue photos, though!


This last photo was taken at about 10pm, Beijing time; sunset at Karakul Lake. We took a lot of pictures while out and about at Karakul, and it is truly an awe-inspiring location to visit. Stay tuned, as tomorrow we will share with you a few of the more surprising sights during our stay at Karakul Lake.