Day 6 was not really very impressive photographically; all we did was a 6-7 hour journey to Hami or Kumul as it is known among Uyghurs. After reaching Kumul, me and my travel buddy had a hard time convincing our hotel staff that we had a booking, since they had no international hostels around we were forced to stay in that budget hotel. Thanks to a good friend who managed to explain all things we got a room with relatively less trouble.
The cafe had 2 young girls as staff, who knew no english but they were very friendly and though we had a hard time communicating with my broken Chinese and sign language we managed to get what we wanted. The idea of going into a local place was to get more info about what to see around and how to get to our next destination Barkol lake. Though the girls couldn't help much we had their boss walk in at the right time that we managed to communicate with him in mix of languages and get some details. There was not much to discuss as there were no major attractions in the town.
Kumul/Hami was kind of a let down because the it was much of a migrant town with more Han Chinese population than local, which kind of a spoiler on the idea of meeting locals. When you come after a wonderful experience in a place like Turpan, what Kumul had to offer looked pretty bleak. Also the trouble we had in finding a cab to take us around was another let down, no cabbie was willing to take us around. Eventually we walked around the whole town to get to the places we wanted to go to.
The day ended with a trip to the local bus station from where we had the buses to Barkol and to find out if they had facility to store our luggage, we found that out the bus station but they had very less facilities. Then we decided to drop out luggage in another bus station from where buses to Urumqi were leaving early in the morning next day and then head to Barkol.
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| On route to Kumul we saw this beautiful Kebab cart, that had such lovely designs on it (Shot from my Mobile) |
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| In our effort to find a nice local place to sit around for a coffee we walked into this rather new cafe opened up in Kumul (Shot from my Mobile) |
Kumul/Hami was kind of a let down because the it was much of a migrant town with more Han Chinese population than local, which kind of a spoiler on the idea of meeting locals. When you come after a wonderful experience in a place like Turpan, what Kumul had to offer looked pretty bleak. Also the trouble we had in finding a cab to take us around was another let down, no cabbie was willing to take us around. Eventually we walked around the whole town to get to the places we wanted to go to.
The day ended with a trip to the local bus station from where we had the buses to Barkol and to find out if they had facility to store our luggage, we found that out the bus station but they had very less facilities. Then we decided to drop out luggage in another bus station from where buses to Urumqi were leaving early in the morning next day and then head to Barkol.
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