THOSE who have toured the Heavenly Pond on Tianshan (Mountain of heaven) in Northwest China's Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region will find it pales in comparison with Kanas Lake, a new natural beauty spot that is being developed as a feast for the eyes of tourists.

Bordering Kazakhstan and Russia in the north and Mongolia in the east, Kanas Lake in Xinjiang's A'ertai Region is 1,340 metres above sea level, a lower altitude than the Heavenly Pond's 1,980 metres. But Kanas covers 460,000 square kilometres, nearly 10 times the size of the Heavenly Pond.

Kanas Lake is really six lakes, whose average water depth of 90 metres is double that of the Heavenly Pond. At present, only three sections of the lake are open to tourists.

The lake is estimated to be 200,000 years old and is China's deepest fresh water lake (184 metres in one spot). The Kanas region is home to 798 species of plants and 117 varieties of birds. Also living in the midst of all this beauty are more than 1,400 people of the Tuva Minority whose ancestors came from Siberia over 1,000 years ago.

A tough trek

It's a long and difficult journey to get to the lake from Urumqi, the capital of Xinjiang. Coaches have to drive more than 1,000km on a rough highway that extends into the Gobi Desert, just like Highway 56 in the US to Las Vegas with few villages and people to be seen along the road.

The journey was divided into two sections, with the first from Urumqi to Bu'erjin, a bordering county, taking nearly 14 hours. The condition of the road meant the coach had to slow down.

However, the long drawn-out trip was occasionally enlivened by the scenery along the road - oilfields, russet sandstone rock formations, the alkaline landscape, open-cut coal mines and, sometimes, wild camels and Mongolian gazelles.

At noon, the coach stopped to give passengers half an hour to have lunch - noodles with tomatoes and eggs, the only food the small roadside restaurant could provide. But looking at the food which seemed somewhat unsanitary, we worried about whether it would cause other problems later.

It was already very late when we arrived at Bu'erjin on the A'ertai Prairie, a small county with a population of 580,000. The grass on the prairie is short and cannot be compared with the boundless grasslands of neighbouring Inner Mongolia.

Bu'erjin, which means "the running river and deer" in the local language, is a place where the Han people live together with the Kazakh minority. A'ertai Mountain, on the borders of China, Mongolia, Russia and Kazakhstan, has been dubbed as a golden mountain because it produces gold.

The next day, after dawn, the guide asked the coach party to finish breakfast quickly so that we could make an early start for our destination - Kanas Lake about four hours away.

Desert vineyards

Turpan, one of the oldest and best-known vineyards in the world, is 183 kilometres away from Urumqi. It is China's hottest region with more than 100 days of 40-plus degrees of heat in summer.

Average annual rainfall is only 16mm and the local houses are mud-built because the locals are unafraid of rain washing them away.

More than 500 varieties of grapes are grown in the vineyards and they are much sweeter than those of California in the US, or so the guide told us.

Turpan and its 5,000 people produce 20 million tons of grapes annually, accounting for 60 per cent of Xinjiang's total grape output.

Just the "Grape Trench", 2km long and 1.5km wide, yields 20 million kilograms of grapes a year and the locals depend on the vintage for their livelihood.

Karez wells

The vineyards are irrigated by the Karez irrigation system which uses underground water from the Gobi Desert which originates in the melting snows of Tianshan.

The oldest Karez wells were built 500 years ago and the largest of them today can irrigate 1.33 hectares of land. The system, with 5,000km of canals, can provide more than 300 million cubic metres of water annually, satisfying 30 per cent of the Turpan region's water demand.

The Karez irrigation system, consisting of well shafts, underground channels and canals, has made Turpan an oasis in the desert and has set an example for people living in arid countries as to how to solve the problem of water shortage.

Cultural relics

The countless cultural relics in the Turpan Basin attract many thousands of Chinese and foreign tourists every year.

One of these sites, Gaochang Ancient City, has a history going back 2,300 years. Occupying an area of 200 hectares, it is made up of an inner city, an outer city and a city wall 11.5 metres high, 12 metres thick and 5.4 kilometres long.

All the houses and palaces were built of mud. In the 13th century, the city was attacked by troops of the Mongolian Empire and when the five-month siege ended, the city was occupied and left in ruins.