Since our summer school English classes have ended for a few weeks, my friend and I decided to see more of Xinjiang. We bought tickets for a bus tour to Kanas Lake which is located almost on the border of three northern neighbours of China, Kazakhstan, Russia and Mongolia. The tickets cost each 460 yuan and included our ticket cost into the area around the lake (100 yuan each), 2 nights in a good hotel in Burqin, a city of 20000 people which is growing rapidly from tourist traffic, restaurants and hotels, and one night in the Tuwa peoples village by the lakeshore. Kanas Lake has been a difficult place to visit until a new highway was completed 3 years ago. The highway is excellent now and, unfortunately for the environment, will bring many millions of people to this beautiful lake. For this reason, to protect the environment around the lake and river, no tourists will be able to sleep near the lake anymore beginning next year. They will be bussed into the area from nearby hostels and hotels and bussed back each evening.
If you ever wish to feel that you have visited Canadian mountains and rivers, here is a place to come that will allow you that impression without leaving China. Kanas Lake is about 3 kms wide and 23 kms long and is a cold, green tinged lake from melting snow in the mountains. It is clean and full of fish. Many hundreds of small streams of cold and fresh water trickle into the lake along the shore. The authorities have built a steel-framed wooden plank boardwalk along the river and a few kms of the lakeshore. This boardwalk was very impressive for me, who has hiked along many of them in Canada. It keeps people up above the ground to protect the plants, roots and soil along the path. The trees, plants, grasses, flowers, mosses and mushrooms are all similar to riparian areas of Canadian rivers and lakes, being the only extension of the Siberian Taiga Forest in China. Truly, if you wish to experience Canadian woodlands, here is the place to come.
The river that exits the lake is a large rushing, river filled with whitewater rapids. It is the biggest tributary of the Ertix River that runs north to the Arctic Ocean. I was again surprised and happy to spend lots of time along the river banks. There was no boardwalk on the far bank and hiking along there we were able to find private, clean places to sit and contemplate this wonderful planet we live upon. Large rubber rafts able to hold 12 excited visitors would float past us, rocking in the river and getting splashed as they rode the standing-waves in the rapids. At 180 yuan each passenger trip down the river, a lot of revenue was being generated while we watched. A typical afternoon brought in about 35000 yuan, I estimated.
I highly recommend that anyone wishing to experience this kind of mountain, lake, river and forest do so within the next few years. Sadly, the tourist traffic, in spite of all efforts to protect it, will probably change the nature of this place, soon, forever.
