Urumqi, capital of the Xinjiang Uyghur autonomous region, is the largest city in Western China and possibly the largest in Central Asia, with some excellent scenery in nearby Heavenly Lake and South Pasture. It also holds the record for the remotest major city in the world 2,500 kilometers from the nearest sea.

It is a booming modern industrial city with a rapid growth rate fueled by mining and oil revenues. Although located on the Silk Road, it has only emerged in the last 200 years. However, Urumqi is rich in history, and the greatest collection of its artifacts can be found in Xinjiang Museum.

The vast territory of Xinjiang (bigger than Alaska) is the eastern frontier of Central Asia, but only about 30 million people live there. A tenth of the people, about three million, live in Urumqi. Some of the best scenery, hiking, and ancient sites in China are in Xinjiang, and Urumqi is the ideal place to start a tour of the region. It has one of China's big international airports and is Xinjiang's transportation hub.

Xinjiang has large and very high mountain ranges, the Silk Road city of Kashgar which retains the atmosphere of its major trading post days, and arid Turpan, the lowest land in China and two hours' driving distance from Urumqi, with its ancient ruins and irrigation system, and grape production.

Urumqi is a base for touring the area, and the local highlights include the Uyghur Regional Museum with ancient Caucasian artifacts and mummies, the International Bazaar as an interesting place to shop, and the nearby beautiful, forested Tianshan Mountains, lakes, and glaciers like the Alps.

If you can travel all over this great region, you can see ancient sites and natural beauty unlike the rest of China. Deserts are bigger, basins are deeper, and mountains are higher and emptier than anywhere except Tibet. The ancient remains left by Caucasian people are highly unusual. There has been a big mix of races, cultures and religions in the area, and all those tribes and empires left behind exotic remains. Since the region is so big and empty, hiking and camping there would offer a truly wild experience.

Urumqi itself is basically a Chinese city. About ten percent of the population are ethnic group people, mostly Uyghur. The International Bazaar, also called the Big Bazaar or Erdaoqiao Market, is especially lively on summer evenings, and you can see a lot of local and regional products for sale. A lot of uniformed security guards and police are stationed around it. Next to the bazaar is Xinjiang Silk Road Museum at the 160 Shengli Road. You can learn about the ancient Silk Road and about the region and its history. Bus 110 stops very close to it. The Urumqi Museum is located at the 123 Nanhu South Road. The Xinjiang Uighur Regional Museum has Caucasian mummies that date from about 2000 BC to AD 400. They are thought to be part of the biggest archeological discoveries of the past hundred years because they shed new light on the history of Eurasia.

About 150 kilometers southeast of Urumqi, on the northern side of the Turpan Depression, is the small, mainly Uighur city of Turpan, which has about 300,000 inhabitants. It is a very lush irrigated area. Around the city of Turpan are the ruins of Jiaohe, the Flaming Mountains, named in the ancient Chinese fairytale Journey to the West, the Astana Burial Grounds, and the Bezeklik Thousand Buddha caves, which are mostly in ruins. Water flows via underground viaducts that are thought of as one of the world's biggest ancient construction projects. Before modern technology, they were what made the otherwise arid land of Turpan fertile and livable.