Day 11 : Yili Doppa Hostel

Day 11 was the first time in 2 weeks I really felt lazy and wanted to wind down and my hostel in Yili, the Doppa (meaning hat) Hostel was perfect. A friendly young couple was running the place and there were a couple of other youngsters around who were staying there since a long time. The hostel was such a warm and cozy place. It was an old traditional Uyghur house converted to a hostel with a beautiful courtyard that had grape vines growing around. Since it was a wooden house they had no heating system,which made the night and early morning temperatures of near zero quite something to handle. The days were cold and sunny which was the perfect weather to sit around and do nothing. 

Our hostel owner, a young and energetic girl

Her partner, was in the quite thoughtful mood when I clicked this

A nice way to know people coming in, the hostel door

The family cat, who always climbs trees to catch birds but some how never learned the trick

The next in the bunch, he is a traveller who works part time at the hostel till he makes enough to move on to the next place

Another one in the bunch, she is from Shanghai who have been travelling all around the world since last 2 years and was slowly planning to get back to base

The day I was there, they were preparing for the low season. Very few people were coming in since the winter was setting in. The couple who owned the place was planning to shut shop and head to their hometown. So they planned to paint the place before they closed the hostel for the season. While they painted I roamed around in a mood for some abstract clicks. 

It's your guess...

Blue and blurred

Neighbours window

This was a street side en-route to a the famous Yili River

The following shots were taken from my mobile, so the pics are not as good as it would have been from the camera.

Hostel Exterior

The whole bunch sun bating on the couch outside

The guys were so friendly that they invited me for lunch, nice spicy home cooked noodle

Lunch with the bunch

The Yili river, this is the place were the Russians reached to when they had a conflict with the Chinese back in 1960's. They even have something like a small victory memorial nearby. 

Though the area near the river was quiet and peaceful I could see signs of rampant construction happening there as well, in an effort to modernise they were loosing the character of the river in its natural self.