Must see attractions in Xinjiang

This absolute wonder of nature is the first of the big plate-glass lakes you meet as you head up to Tashkurgan on the Karakoram Hwy. Backed by sublime sand mountains and often without a single ripple in its...

This extraordinary natural rock arch (the rather prosaic Uyghur name means simply ‘mountain with a hole in it’) is one of the tallest on earth. The first westerner to describe it was Eric Shipton, the last...

No visit to Kashgar is complete without a trip to the Livestock Market, which takes place once a week on Sunday. The day begins with Uyghur farmers and herders trekking into the city from nearby villages. By...

Xinjiang’s massive provincial museum is a must for Silk Road aficionados. The highlight is the locally famous ‘Loulan Beauty’, the first of half a dozen 3800-year-old desert-mummified bodies of Xinjiang's...

The Old Town is the soul of Kashgar, and as such the government has spent much of the past two decades knocking it down block by block and building a modern replacement. Yet it's still possible to see some of the...

Also called Yarkhoto, Jiaohe was established by the ancient Jushi kingdom as a garrison town in the 2nd century BC. It’s one of the world’s largest (6500 residents once lived here), oldest (1600 years old) and...

Stunning Kanas Lake (哈纳斯湖, Hānàsī Hú) is a long finger of water surrounded by soaring mountain peaks nestled in the southernmost reaches of the Siberian taiga ecosystem, pinched in between Mongolia, Russia and...

Two thousand metres up in the Tian Shan range is Tian Chi, a small, long steely-blue lake nestled below the view-grabbing 5445m Peak of God (博格达峰, Bógédá Fēng). Scattered across the alpine pine and spruce-covered...

Built to honour Turpan general Emin Hoja, this splendid 44m-high mud-brick structure is the tallest minaret in China. Named Sūgōng Tǎ after Emin’s son Suleiman, who oversaw its construction (1777–78), its...

Set in a green valley fringed by the Flaming Mountains, this mud-brick village offers a fascinating glimpse of traditional Uyghur life and architecture. It has been a pilgrimage site for Muslims for centuries, as...

Hotan’s most popular attraction is its weekly Sunday market. The covered market bustles every day of the week, but on Sundays it swamps the northeast part of town, reaching fever pitch between noon and 2pm...

Kashgar’s main bazaar is open every day but really kicks it up a gear on Sunday. Step through the jam-packed entrance and allow your five senses to guide you through the market; spices and teas are an obvious...

Near the Bezeklik Caves in Turpan are the Flaming Mountains, which appear at midday like multicoloured tongues of fire. The Flaming Mountains were immortalised in the classic Chinese novel Journey to the West, in...

Xinjiang’s second-largest museum houses a rich collection of relics recovered from archaeological sites across the Turpan Basin, including a superb collection of dinosaur fossils, dinosaur eggs and various...

Vast Sayram Lake, 120km north of Yining and 90km west of Bole, is an excellent spot to get a taste of the Tian Shan range (Tengri Tagh in Kazakh). The lake is especially colourful in June and July, when the...

This cave complex, which dates from the 6th to 14th centuries, is located in a mesmerising desert landscape. Bezeklik means ‘Place of Paintings’ in Uyghur and the murals painted in the 11th century represented a...

The deserts around Hotan are peppered with the faint remains of abandoned cities. The most interesting are those of Melikawat, 25km south of town, a Tang dynasty settlement with wind-eroded walls, Buddhist stupas...

The chief reason to visit Hami is for this wonderfully serene complex of tombs containing the nine generations of Hami kings who ruled the region from 1697 to 1930. The blue- and green-tiled main tomb is the...

This 2600-year-old tomb contains 13 naturally mummified Mongol bodies, still sporting shreds of colourful clothing. What's particularly interesting here is that unlike the mummies on display in the various...

The yellow-tiled Id Kah Mosque, which dates from 1442, is the spiritual and physical heart of the city. Enormous (it's the largest mosque in Xinjiang), its courtyard and gardens can hold 20,000 people during the...