Oh, I c. Thank you for your great explanation! Wonderful Haiku!
I don't know if the landscape is similar to Mongolia, but one thing I make sure is the winter in both is very cold. The sky in Xinjiang is so high and wide, the sun looks very big, at least bigger than my hometown--Central China, and the most impressive feeling is it seems that the wind is everywhere even in summer. So even though the temperature there is high in summer, you still feel cool.

What a pity! I have no talent to describe what I have seen and felt in Xinjiang well in English. I guess it should be more like “Five Central Asian countries” such as Kazakhstan,Uzbekistan, etc. whose common main religion is Islam. At the same time I notice that the local minority food is also similar to these countries, including Nang/馕, pilaf/手抓饭, lamb kebab, etc.

I doubt which religion people in today's Mongolia believes in. Is it still Shamanism？It is very interesting to learn the history about Genghis Khan and his four major successor khanates. The place where I stayed once belonged to one of them. So the place I stayed is really named after its Mongolian name. And the water there is really offered by the melting snow water from the Mountion Tianshan. In ancient times such as in Han dynasty or Tang dynasty, the people in Xinjiang believed in Buddihism. Later in the Mongolia's colonial period, a Mongolian official/nobleman himself converted to Islam and forced the local people in Xinjiang to change their religion(Buddihism) into Islam, too. (Of course, there was a time of Mongolian ruling in Central China, but shorter than in Xinjiang.)

No need to be jealous of me visiting a place near to Mongolia. Just like a poem of Tang dynasty saying, 海内存知己天涯若比邻a bosom friend afar brings a distant land near. You have no idea how I have enjoyed your splendid blogs. You make me feel England so near and intimate. Liverpool and the Mersey mermaid...