The journey to the central line: inbound (July 31)

Given the tense security situation in Xinjiang, especially with the Olympic Games only a week away at eclipse time, it seemed a wise idea to travel to the eclipse zone in an official manner. Our group is very grateful that the Urumqi Observatory invited us onto their Grand Tour from their HQ in downtown Urumqi to Yiwu and the central line and back! The initial contact was facilitated by the spokesman of the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy which has a long-running cooperation with their Chinese colleagues, and Profs. Han JinLin and Wang Na were so kind to welcome us.

Posters at the Urumqi HQ of the Radio Observatory, our hosts for the eclipse - and, it seems, Eclipse Central for Urumqians.

Preparations on the morning of 31 July: Paying the director (much less than any commercial offer for the same service), stocking water, getting commands (via megaphone, just like any typical Chinese tour group :-) - and settling in "sleeper bus" #3. These unique busses have fixed beds in 3 rows and two layers - a first it feels bizarre to travel 800 km and back feet first, but it gets pretty comfy after a while ...

Desert views ... always moving East at first there's sunshine, but by 17:00 Beijing Time we catch up with a bad weather system that's moving in the same direction. And predicted to have cleared the E zone tomorrow ...

... but now it's raining in the desert, not much actually, but it's impressive to see how suddenly raging rivers form next to the road. Thankfully using old beds, so there's no trouble with our progress.

Not your usual desert view: the camels are normal out here in Eastern Xinjiang, but the police car is not - it's part of our bus convoy; we are under official guard from Urumqi almost to Yiwu (helping things along at numerous checkpoints). And the rainbow at 18:15, ½ hour before Barkol (Balikun) is reached - a sign of hope for things to come 25 hours later ...? :-)

It's even double, as the final - contrast-boosted - image shows.

More impressions from the loooong (12 hr 40 min!) journey which was pretty exciting nonetheless, taking us through varied desert and steppe landscapes which more and more resemble (neighboring) Mongolia. (The journey to the previous TSE had also involved big bus convoys in a desert, incidentally, but a very boring one. :-) A little halo is seen at 19:00 - and plenty of crepuscular rays at 20:30. A few km later the final road to Yiwu is reached, where we arrive in darkness.

And now ... the next morning - eclipse day! (Or do you wanna go back right away?)