The Best of Xinjiang---Hiking in "Golden" Altay （2）

Morning Sunshine

Day 2 Halfway Lodge to Hemu Village

After saying goodbyeto the hospital Kazakh friend Jia Naer, my friends and I began to head to nextstop, Hemu Village, which is a Tuvinians’ village.

We are heading to Hemu Village

Tuvans are Turkic ethnic group who mainly live in southern Siberia. However there are still 3,900 Tuvinians living in China, and Hemu village is the largest settlement of those people. When I was in high school, I was taught from history textbook that West Turkic Empire was beaten by Tang Dynasty around 7th century; then they had to move all the way to the west and became the current ancestor of Turkish.  Surprisingly, nowadays, people can still meet great Turkic descents who live in the far west part of China. 

 

Tuvan and his horse

At the afternoon, we walked across a couple of houses of Tuvans. As we can see from the pictures, basically, they are nomadic people. Most of them raise cattle and horses. As the sunset "pour down" onto the hillside, cattle, horses and Mountain Alta, that looks fabulous! 

Handsome, isn't it?

For the second day hiking, some of suggestions online may tell you that you can spend like 4 hours to finish it; whereas my suggest is that take you time. Slow down. Enjoy the wonderful scenery. You can get up around 9 AM, and have a great lunch by the halfway creek. Then finish the rest, which this whole trail may cost you 6 hours.

why you staring at me?

I mean, not everyone can see this scenery   during their whole life, so why not you just slow down and enjoy this god's masterpieces?

finally, we arrived at Hemu village! ( See Top Left )

Tomorrow, we will face the most challenging part of this 4-day hiking, which begins from Hemu Village and ends at Black Lake. What is gonna happen? We will SEE...