May 26 Ascent to our destination today - Kalajun Grassland 喀拉俊空中大草原

Travel in Xinjiang involves much of driving, in particular the way we plan our trip which centered around photographic spots. Tiresom at times, but you got rewarded with non-stop beautiful landscape. After leaving Zhaosu, we started a long and slow ascent to Kalajun Grassland 喀拉俊空中大草原. known as the grassland in the air. Kalajun, in Kazakh, means "a dark widerness". So we continue to climb.
Along the road, we saw the river became narrower and water more angrier; and we saw the change of lifestyle, local people riding their horses, tending their sheep.
I made some snap shots to record the landcape along the road, pictures here taken with Sigma DP-1 - a compact and great camera, more on this later. My wife, Pook, also snap a picture on me while I am taking pictures.And these two by myself, using Sigma DP-1.Higher up, few more images taken with Nikon D3X and the powerful AF-S VR 70-200/2.8G IF-ED.One more shot for the look of the grassland before we reach its top.Conversation in the car centered around a possible change of plan due to the news we heard yesterday on our way to Xiata, the road maintanance may block our way to Bayanbulak, and very much jeopardize our following trip plan. Very much so because Wanbing 萬兵 has the high hope to produce his master piece in Bayanbulak and lobby us to the scenario to add one extra day in case whether becomes a porblem, now it seemed we have to turn back to Urumqi, which means total change of 2nd 1/2 of trip and lost of time.
And now we have reched the altitude of snow line, and our climb depend on Neo and his Land Cruiser, we all cross our fingers.