A Morning Walk in Hemu Village 

On a chilly 5 degree C morning we were woken by torrential rain and the pitiful howling of the hostel owner's mastiff imprisoned outside in its small iron cage. It was freezing cold in our bare hostel room and there was no reason to get out of bed. As Alan said ruefully, when there was absolutely no heating, why sit on top of the bed when you could stay marginally warmer under the blankets (read: there was nothing at all to do other than sit around waiting for breakfast). And there was no way we were going to try the primitive cold shower on top of the toilet, so we settled on a brief wash in the sink. We just hoped that we could catch an early bus out of the place and head for our next destination of Buerjin.

Thankfully, the morning cleared to a beautiful sunny day. Alan who had had quite enough of Hemu, was not keen on any more village exploration so I set out on my own for a brief walk. Despite its lack of facilities, the hostel actually had Wi-Fi so at least Alan could spend his time looking up on our iPad some information about our coming destinations. 

Admittedly, Hemu village did look marginally better on a sunny morning. The scenery surrounding the village was undeniably beautiful but it could not detract from the miserable hovels and filth of the village houses and hostels. 

Like most villages in China, Hemu was not an early riser. In a village still asleep, the only inhabitants I could see were a few lonely street sweepers. In every town and village in China there seemed to be an endless amount of street cleaners, using primitive wide straw brooms or as in Kanas Lake Geopark and Hemu village, carefully scooping up cattle and horse poo with short handled shovels. Mostly women, we imagined their jobs must be pretty unrewarding. After all, in Hemu there was an endless supply of animal manure and rubbish, and we guessed an endless amount of this sort of employment. 

 

I soon caught up with one slow walking sweeper, who with her head down, seemed totally absorbed in her occupation. Or perhaps she was bored mindless? On seeing, me she turned her head away, almost as if in shame. "Ni hao!" I greeted her. She looked startled, then beamed and waved. 

I walked only about a kilometer before turning around. Alan appeared in the distance and we walked back to our hostel together. Hemu obviously doesn't get many foreign visitors. A sprinkling of local people appeared and stared at us, totally fascinated. A team of local farmers stacked on a tiny tractor gazed unbelievingly at us, then as we waved they called out and laughed. It was one of our a nicer moments in otherwise unfriendly down town Hemu.

Our opinion of our hostel didn't improve over breakfast. Abdulrahman joined us at a filthy table, lined with grease and splattered morsels of food from the night before. At least it had been cleared of most of the plates - the remains of our largely uneaten meal from the evening before, were still sitting on the table opposite. Abdulrahman was not keen to leave Hemu too early as he said the buses did not depart until the afternoon. I am afraid for us however, there was absolutely no negotiation. We were getting out of Hemu even if we had to hire a private mini van.

Thankfully, the buses did in fact run in the morning - and we were packed and waiting in no time. Our hostel owner's demeanor had not improved from the night before either. There were certainly no smiles or assistance with our baggage. It was obvious he was in a foul temper as his four wheel drive skidded out of the hostel, promptly dumping us at the bus stop. Needless to say, there was not to lot of thanks or fond farewells from us either. Sadly, I wondered about his poor dog locked in the iron cage. It was gut wrenching. The animal wagged its tail when he saw us but given no fond language or patting by his owner; just yelled at to stop barking by a man with cruel eyes. 

It was a real shame about Hemu. Situated in such a glorious setting, it could have been so much better. We shuddered as we realised we had another three night's hostel accommodation along our coming journey. As our bus pulled out, we looked back at the forlorn little village. Farewell Hemu!

A Return Trip to Buerjin

The scenery along our 35 kilometer trip back to the bus depot where we had left our car, was stunning. High lush alpine meadows were grazed by fat ponies and sheep. The snaking road led us through undulating hills flanked with spruce clad steep mountains. Long spikes of white flowering grass like plants lined our road. On the flatter pastures, colourful wild flowers provided a gorgeous cottage garden effect. Numerous ger camps plonked right on the edge of the road advertised accommodation for tourists. It all looked pretty grim though, with just the most basic of facilities - just a bed in a ger and apparently no showers or toilets. Set in such remote locations, we wondered with what on earth the tourists would occupy themselves?

 
 
When we reached our bus station, the clouds opened once again and as we disembarked our bus struggling with our luggage, the rain was bucketing down. Adbulrahman told us to wait at the bus station gates, saying that he and Sabir would be back soon. Not only were we drenched but so was all our luggage. Fortunately, a friendly Chinese tourist couple helped us find some shelter for which we were very grateful. An hour passed and we had no idea why, or to where Abdulrahman and Sabir had disappeared. Our lovely tourist friends were obviously concerned for us. The husband spoke a little English and was apparently offering for his friend to drive us to Buerjin - but there was no point in that - we had no idea where we were staying as all our hotels seemed to have changed at every location. Needless to say our phone calls to our guide were left unanswered.

Eventually our Abdulrahman and Sabir turned up. It was terrible, they said. Poor Sabir had a problem with his drivers' tourist licence and had to pay "foreigners' fees" for his bus tickets to Hemu and back". Our hearts obviously bled for poor Sabir... It would however, have been nice to know what the problem was, where they were and how long we would be waiting. A very deep breath was required....

We flopped into Sabir's car and slept the rest of the trip back to Buerjin. We were of course retracing our steps from our forward journey to Hemu.

We were highly relieved when Sabir pulled our can into the car park of the Mystic Lake Grand Hotel. Surrounded by beautiful park-like grounds, the somewhat tizzy hotel was rather lovely and so much, much better than the hovel we stayed in the evening before. The towels may have been worn and frayed but for goodness sake, we had towels, soap - and toilet paper! I may add here that the toilet rolls in the Chinese hotels we stayed in during our travels through Xinjiang were crazily small, with no more than around 20 sheets per roll. Was this because of environmental issues - or was it because the hotels were becoming much tighter? We suspect it was the latter. Sadly, it seemed that the whole tourism industry was becoming much more tourist savvy. We noted throughout our travels that some of the natural friendliness of the staff had waned and certainly the service in most of the hotels had diminished greatly from that which we were used to in China.

Hanging our for good Uyghur bread and perhaps even some cheese (just any food would have been good at the time..), we implored Abdulrahman to take us to some local markets - which he did. The enormous markets were fortunately located in a huge covered building, and thankfully we were able to find some good bread - and some inedible cheese. It was indeed fun once again to be away from the contrived tourist scene, milling around market stalls and rubbing shoulders with real people going about their day to day shopping. 



An enormous clap of thunder riveted us in our tracks. And the rain fell like there was no tomorrow. I don't think we have ever seen such a heavy deluge. In no time, even the covered part of the markets was beginning to flood and the outside stalls were totally under water. The storm lasted for a good thirty minutes in which time, the whole area surrounding the markets had become a wide swirling lake. In vain, stall holders placed layers of cardboard down and frantically dug channels to divert the water. Was this my mother June back in action again? Well, most probably....

When the rain had finally stopped we waded out of the markets and back to our hotel where we spent a very quiet and relaxed afternoon. Alan made friends with one of the lovely women cleaners (they were apparently the most savvy with televisions) and together they had worked out how to manipulate an amazing number of set top boxes on the television to find an English speaking channel. Oh, what bliss! From here on, Alan's first mission when entering a hotel room was to work out how to find an English speaking television channel. And mostly "Mission English TV" was very successful, but a crazy effort was always involved.

Later that evening Abdulrahman rang us to say that the road from Hemu to Buerjin was closed due to serious storm damage. Also, there had been a series of deadly landslides in the Yining area with a number of lives lost.

We looked at each other. How lucky were we to get out of Hemu?

"Awful about the region surrounding Yining" Alan commented later. "Perhaps the roads might also be closed to (our coming destinations of) the grassland hostels?"