The road to Kalajun

A slow morning today. After such delicious samsa yesterday we returned to the same little shop and were treated to watching the process of making the samsa. Today they were making them in a slightly different shape called Palmoudan (I think that's what he was saying) which basically meant it was pressed using your hand. Once they were further, the samsa are stuck to the inside of a clay oven to bake before being scraped off to eat. Vela's mum even had a little dance with the kitchen team to some local Xinjiang music!

After lunch we made a quick stop at a little town called Tekesi famous for its layout of an 8-diagram which is essentially 4 ring roads in the shape of an Octagon with roads segmenting them through their points. The shape is significant in Buddhist culture. Vela flew the drone to capture some of the shape, but the drone is limited to about 120m so we couldn't quite show the whole layout - but I'm sure you get the idea. Before leaving we made sure to sample some locally made ice cream.

Then it was onwards to our main destination - Kalajun. Kalajun is kind of difficult to describe, it felt like we were staying on a farm (which I guess we were) but it was also a scenic park with tourist activities. The best label I could put on it would be a "scenic farm reserve." On our way in we drove up steep cliffs to where the landscape turned into Highland meadows with rolling hills. We passed herds of sheep, cattle and horses, and there were plenty of marmots doing their thing in the fields too. We arrived at our Mongol Bao camp for the evening, we got much better vibes here than in Sayram Lake. Apparently there is a view of snowy mountains from the Mongol Bao, but we couldn't see anything due to the haze.

Our host offered us to head on a short horse ride, about 2 hours, which we quickly accepted. It was great fun walking the horses over to the forest and back, although they might have needed a bigger horse for Nathan...

After our mini trek, we returned to our Mongol Bao and had a lamb hotpot for dinner before settling down for some much needed rest.Read more