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The Kanas National Nature Reserve, in Xinjiang (Photo Essays)

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The Kanas National Nature Reserve

Note: at the end of the article you’ll find a photo gallery of 20 photographs taken of the Reserve.

The Kanas National Nature Reserve is found in the heart of the Altai Mountains, in Xinjiang, at the border with Kazakhstan, Russia and Mongolia, and owes its fame to Lake Kanas and its alpine scenery.

An entrance ticket to the Reserve costs 240 Yuan a person and is valid for two days. The price includes entrance to the park and unlimited use of buses for getting around its interior (uses of buses is necessary since the Reserve is quite vast).

You can also take a boat ride on the Kanas River, the ticket costs 120 Yuan.

Lake Kanas is located at an altitude of 1,325 meters wile Friendship Peak, which marks the border with Russia and Kazakhstan, is at an altitude of 4,374 meters.

The best times for visiting the Reserve are in June, when the trees are in bloom, and in September when the landscape takes on the typical colors of autumn foliage (the photos in this article were taken at the end of September).

I don’t recommend coming in winter, which in these parts is extremely rough.

How to get to the Kanas National Nature Reserve

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Review of the e-Book “Xinjiang: A Travelers’ Guide to Far West China”

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This article is a review of the travel guide “Xinjiang : A Traveler’s Guide to Far West China“, written by Josh Summer, the soul of Far West China, notoriously my favorite website of my favorite Chinese province: Xinjiang.

Here at SDC we rarely review travel guides. The reason is, for the most part we don’t like them. Today we make an exception because, in my opinion, Josh’s guide is… an exception.

Why? There are two reasons:

  • The first is that Xinjiang is one of the most difficult Chinese provinces to explore, especially if you don’t speak Mandarin: there are very few guides or web sites that cover the province (for some areas the only resource in English is Far West China, besides which there are only sites in Mandarin, almost all of which are terrible); tourism is, compared to other places in China, less developed, just like the infrastructure. This last point is the main problem when you consider that we’re talking about a province that alone covers a sixth of China’s surface area.
  • The second reason is that Josh, the guide’s author, lives in Xinjiang since 2006, has explored every corner of it, and most of all has an unbridled love for this region. This love shows in the effort he put into writing this guide and what he’s been putting on his website for years.

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