Off to Turpan or "your country is very small island"

Monday 20 October 2025

We rose at 05:00 to catch the 07:07 from Kuqa to Turpan.  This is the general route of our travels in the last week - knocked up on my phone whilst standing in a queue.

We had to get to the station by 06:00 to give us time to pass through security and ensure we were standing by the right gate 20 minutes ahead of the train arriving.  Although we could have tried to translate the Chinese notice boards, it was easiest to walk up to a train official, show them our ticket (in Chinese of course) and get directions.  We were standing on the wrong floor of a railway station once.  

In China, long distance slow trains have three types of ticket: hard seat, hard sleeper and soft sleeper, and we'd booked a soft sleeper.  As we’d joined the train for a day journey, we assumed the beds would have been turned into seats (like a day cabin) but they weren’t.  The attendant bought in clean sheets for us so it was churlish not to fit another nap in.  We had a 7 hour journey and I slept ~5 of them!  I knew I was weary after a pretty non-stop schedule, but no idea how much sleep I needed to recoup.  Honestly it was a dream: sleepily getting onto a train to be presented with a bed. 

JC took photos of the passing landscape.  Not much out there.

The lady in our compartment spoke some English and, when I awoke, we chatted about high speed trains.  I commented that in China their slow trains went as fast as British fast trains.  Her observant response was “but you only live on a small island so it’s ok”.

We arrived in Turpan at 14:30 and installed ourselves at the hotel.  Once slightly organised, we headed to Emin Minaret and Uyghur mosque.  

At 44 metres high, it is apparently the tallest minaret in China, and a much revered Islamic monument.  It was built in 1777/8 and has beautiful lattice brick work on the tower.  It was surrounded by graves - although they were suspiciously in too perfect a condition for me to assume them original.  

The mosque inside was flanked by rows of rooms used as madrasahs until the 1950s. 

We dined locally in a restaurant where the staff were still mopping the floor when we rocked up at 18:30 - they eat out late here.  JC had a disgusting looking dish, in my unbiased opinion, consisting of what looked like a whole chicken chopped into bits and deep fried, tossed with garlic and chillies.  He seemed happy enough admittedly.  

Turpan by night.