Day eight in Xinjiang: A tour to Tianchi Lake

By Dominic Swire

Monday August 24

Today's jaunt was to Xinjiang's famous Tianchi Lake about 115 kilometers east of Urumqi city at the top of the Tianshan Mountain range. The site is one of the region's most well known tourist spots �C and after climbing up 200 meters through a forest path to get there, it's easy to see why.

Climbing up the Tianshan mountain range just outside Urumqi city, Xinjiang region, Monday August 24, 2009. [Photo:CRIENGLISH.com]

The winding road up to Tianchi Lake includes many hairpin bends as it follows the contours of the rolling green mountain range peppered with pine trees. It's said that there are 33 turns in total, but we didn't have a chance to validate this claim as our bus stopped 200 meters below our destination by a small pond, which legend has it was the footbath of the Mother of the Western Skies.

This mythical goddess is the reason for the name of the larger lake at the top of the mountain, which translates to "Heavenly Lake" in English. The story goes that she used to invite other immortals around the lake to celebrate the blossoming of the local peach tree. As this only happened once every 3,000 years, naturally the festivities were more intense than the average party.

The pond by which we started our climb was a beautiful view, surrounded by fresh greenery and a waterfall in the far corner. Looking into the water you could make out black and gold fish, some of which were leaping joyfully out of the water. The pond was surrounded by a wooden platform which led off towards the waterfall. At first this seemed just a place to stretch the legs and take a breath on the way up to the top of the mountain. But as we ducked under some low hanging branches and climbed the steps beside the bubbling water we saw the path continued deeper into the forest...