Silk Road - Xinjiang Karakul II, black lake on Pamir.

Karakul, in Chinese, sounded like noise. In Kirghiz, it means "Black Lake".  That says it all.  Located 196KM from Kaxgar and at an altitude of 3600M, 9 hours bus on the Karakoram Highway, also 2 hours bus from Taxkorgan near the Khunjerab Pass at the border from China to Pakistan. What more can I say, an amazing place.

As we arrived in the evening, the 1st scenery in sight has been no black.

The scene is so peaceful that those sheeps were not moving.

With the geographical location, I had not realized that I slowly slipped into my first ever mountain sickness, or medically called altitude sickness. Well, it was also because we didn't want to stay at the only so called "hotel" near the lake, but walked with a local peasant who was on the same bus with us to his house for a night stay. The local peasant is a local farmer and had just been out to Kaxgar Sunday Bazaar for his weekly trading and errand. We asked as the bus let us off and he was fine so we followed.  After "exerting" on high altitude for almost 2 hours, we reached his little village, front to start with, a mosque.

Mosque here could be just the arch with a door, it is outdoor praying!

As we turned our heads, we saw this amazing snow cap mountain right at the back yard.

On the way to his house, we met his children who were playing out at a bright sunny evening. You can not find children any more innocent as these children.

His house was surrounded with stone made wall. What the real surprise was as when entered the house, I saw the whole wall piled with beautiful, really nice and beautiful blankets.  I love looking at it.

In the middle of the house, there is a pipe with a stove to keep the house warm.  He instructed his wife to make noddle (exactly like fresh pasta or fresh pan mee), with a tomato sauce cooked with local lamb meat and chili. 

By that time, I was alreay badly hit. I had not eated anything since the morning, constantly felt drownsy and vomiting.  My head felt like drawing back, heavy and lack of oxygen.  I was laying down and lost all apertize.  The lady advised me to have some of the hot soup from cookig the noddle with a dash of salt in it.

She tucked me in with 3 of her pile of beautiful blankets, when everyone was having dinner, the night fall was freezing cold, much colder than those nights I had in Canada.