The night market of Burqin (布爾津)

The night market is famous for grilled fish from Irtysh River (額爾齊斯河).

五彩灘，布爾津。Rainbow Beach, Burqin, Xinjiang.

Xianjiang has many area with is type of scenery, this is probably the smallest, but I am glade that we saw it.  We flied to Altay then took a 3-hour drive to Burqin to check in the hotel then went to the Rainbow Beach in time for the sunset.  It is on the bank of Irtysh River (額爾齊斯河) which is the only river flowing toward west in China.

新疆抓飯, Urumqi

The tour guide took us to this small roadside restaurant just outside of the airport for lunch before flying out to Altay (阿勒泰).  She claims that it has the best local Uyghyr (維吾爾) food.  We had some dishes to go with noodle, which tasted like Japanese Undo noodle.  But the real highlight is the rice dish that they were cooking.  We finally had a plate of it, it was good, better than many of the same dishes that we had latter on during the trip.

解放廣場，烏魯木齊，新疆。Liberation Square, Urumqi, Xinjiang, China

The square is right outside of Hoi Tak Hotel (海德酒店) that we stayed for the first day at Urumqi.  It is in memory of the communist army victory over Nationalist army in 1949.  At that time, my parents already established in Taiwan, away from the turmoil as Nationalist army of Republic of China was defeated by Mao's army all over China.  It is now a peaceful square where local citizen come to exercise every morning. 

Trip to Northwest of China

It is a 12-day trip that covers Northern Xinjiang (), Dunhuang () and Xian () with my sister's family.  I brought with me photographic equipments which include Nikon D4, 27-300mm VR, 16-35mm VR and Coolpix A.  It is a much lighter weight traveling pack, in some occasions I may hope that I have better lens but overall, the set up does its duty.

Many times, I carry only Coolpix A which is a 27mm, DX format pocket camera.  It does its duty but Nikon 1 can do almost the same with same picture quality.

For this trip, I did not use a backpack, but a shoulder bag.  A few times I hope that I have the backpack, but most of the time the shoulder bag is alright.

Coolpix A at Taoyuan Airport

Lion Kill

It was in the morning of July 31, 2013 at 10:51am.  At 41 second all seems still peaceful, 7 seconds later all hell loose.

It was the second day after we arrived at Masai Mara and our fourth day in Kenya.  Our driver had been a bit slow, we were somewhat concerned of were we seeing as much as we should.  We had been on the game drive for almost 5 hours that morning and was in the midst of a herd of several thousands of wildebeests.  There was a bit commotion around and some wildebeests were streaming past us.  Our driver was on alert.  Then suddenly, he put the 4x4 in gear and we were flying in the herd, which was then in stamped.  I had my camera aiming towards the dust clouds in the distance, in 15 seconds we were on the scene and all was over. 

The lioness killed the wildebeest by bear-hug the animal and bit into the soft tissue of the nose and mouth.  The victim was killed by suffocation.  The whole process took just several minutes

The kill was actually carried out by three lions, the lioness and her two cubs.  Our team members in another 4x4 saw them earlier stalking the wildebeest herd.  The mother sent the two cubs around to generate confusion in the herd when the mother was ready for the kill.

After the kill, they came back to the scene to join their mother.  One of them eventually pull the carcass into the bush, a painful view.