We caught a soft-sleeper train from Kashgar to Urumqi, a full day of travelling, as we had a room to ourselves the time went by fairly quickly.

thydzikgooglemap(http://sonyaandtravis.com/maps/kashgar-china-to-urumqi-china.xml)

Urumqi is a large gateway city connecting Central Asia to China, we didn’t spend too much time in the city, but did enjoy the People’s Park with leafy surrounds, pond and the pavilion in traditional Chinese architecture was a nice change from the Islamic architecture we were now used to.

The highlight was  a day trip to Tian Chi (Heavenly Lake).