From Brooklyn to Beijing

Imagine a place so pristine, so untouched, so natural, so beautiful, so calm, so quiet that all you hear is the river rushing over rocks, the hum of flies across the lake, the flapping of grass in the wind, the crack of glacier ice falling in the distance.   That’s what I experienced in Turgen National Park, a mere 2 hour ride from Almaty, Kazakhstan’s largest city. Pretty sweet, huh? When I said I wanted to do a visa run to somewhere in Central Asia, people looked at me funny but it didn’t stop me. Nature- I craved nature. And nature is what I got. Culture- I craved culture. And culture is what I got. New experience? Check. Challenging mentally? Check. Challenging physically? A million checks. Worth it? Of course! I'm going to start on day 3 of my 5-day trek with Trekking Club, KZ (highly recommended!) because that’s when I had the hardest day of my life, physically and mentally. Well, in the past couple of years.  I was teary-eye...

I know when you think of Silk Road you imagine camel caravans of traders, spices upon spices, exotic tastes and smells, vast landscapes. Well, fast forward to the Silk Road remains of today in Northwest China’s Gansu province, and you get camel caravans of middle school students on a field trip, monks upon monks on their iphones, the tastes and smells of the slow train, but yes, definitely vast landscapes still abound. Paul and I planned an epic one week journey along the Silk Road on our quest to cover all top 30 Lonely Planet and Rough Guides destinations in china- we ticked off 7! And since long time no blog, I deemed it worthy of sharing. So here we go. Stop 1: Dunhuang . After a plane to a taxi to an overnight train, we woke up to our first Silk Road city. Dunhuang used to be a major trading spot on the Silk Road but currently is just a nice tourist destination and jumping off point for seeing the Gobi Desert. When we arrived at our hotel, the sand d...