Welcome to the first in the series of Remote Blogging! In this case, my parents took a trip to Xinjiang for my Mom's 60th birthday and have sent in photos and a description via email. The area looks breathtaking - hope to visit it one day!

Dear Andrea,

For your info, we stayed in Urumuchi, the capital, and made day trips to Shiheze and Turfan. The capital and Turfan were key stops along the silk road from China to the Middle East and Europe. The native population are Uighurs, Moslems since about the Yuan Dynasty, but Buddhist before that. I think I saw something to the effect that Urumuchi is the place on the planet most distant from any ocean. The city is at the northern foot of the Tianshan mountain range (in which sits the lake). There is enough rainfall on the northern side of the range to support agriculture, crops like corn, cotton, and fruit. It's very much like California's Central Valley. Turfan is known for its grapes and raisins. But the high mountain range, with the Tianshan peak towering about 3000 meters above sea level, prevents precipitation to the south. There the landscape is "gobi," the local term for rocky desert, for hundreds of miles.

Love,
Daddy