The howling, banshee wailing of the wind during the night has left a calling card. We awake to a city covered with snow! It is, to me, a wonderful sight. Snow. The city is encased in white, a layer of make-up to hide the blemishes and blights. And it is cold, the sort of fresh, clean cold that reveals your breath and makes your skin tingle. Leaving the hotel with our gear, we pause outside. I am keen to stay another day, have some breakfast at the Holiday Inn, then enjoy the snow, which is already beginning to lose its freshness. But our faithful shadows, that is, Blue and Kerry, want to get going. So we set off up the street towards the bus stop. Outside Remland Park, we stop [ my diary pauses here until I return to it a few days later. This is the page of squiggly notes I made on the bus to Turpan]
to take photographs. The pagoda guarding the entrance has a delicate covering of snow on its ornate roofs, and pools of water gleam at the foot of their steps.
Inside, the park is cold and tranquil, the kind of tranquillity that always follows snow: a sort of silence before the world reawakens. I take a few photographs, using black and white film, of the lake and its attendant pagodas, the winding pathways, and the trailing branches of the overhanging trees encrusted with snow giving the appearance of white tinsel. Standing beside that lake, I feel an immense solitude creep over me, and if it wasn’t for Blue and Kerry, – audibly agitating outside the gate that we move on – I think that I would stay there all day, watching the snow melt and embracing the silence.
Small flakes of snow, shaken loose from the trees lining the street, fall around us as we walk along the wet pavement. Children scamper and slide on patches of snow and splash through slushy puddles that their adult counterparts try to avoid. I notice a poster on the shuttered window of a music store. It advertises a “new” album called Golden Disc, featuring Rick Astley, Jason Donovan (Rhythm of the Rain), and Richard Marks: all circa 1990.
At the railway station, we look with despair at the huge queues waiting to buy tickets. It appears hopeless to even try to find out about timetables and fares, so we abandon snow-covered Ürümqi for the Turpan Depression.
Author’s Note: The narrative will continue on Sunday, October 16th. There’s drama coming up!
CurseOfTheTraveller 