SMU “Camel Brothers” Skateboarding to Xinjiang from Sichuan

Taking a picture at the main gate of SMU before “Camel Brothers” starting off

With graduation approaching, a student of Southwest Minzu University (SMU), Dos, from Xinjiang did a big thing. At the beginning of this year, Dos, together with his partner, Hayrat, started their skateboarding journey with their packages. They took 53 days and travelled 2,200 kilometers from Sichuan to Xinjiang with climbing snow mountains, resisting heavy winds, crossing depopulated zones, and tramping over hill and dale along the way.
The original intention of Dos and Hayrat’s sliding journey was to express their love to their hometown, letting more people know and fall in love with Xinjiang. They also raised books for children in Xinjiang farming and pastoral areas, in collaboration with SMU public-service team “Light Year”. For such a journey, they made a hit on the Internet. Many netzines called them “camel brothers”, which was firstly from the SMU official platform.
When interviewed by a reporter of NEWSSC, Dos said, “we make more mainland fellows understand better about Xinjiang and make them know Xinjiang people are warm and friendly through what we did. At the same time, people in our hometown have realized we can work together to publicize our hometown to others.”
Sliding from Sichuan to Xinjiang to publicize their hometown
Dos, a Kazak in Xinjiang, is a soon-to-be-graduate of Department of Business Administration, School of Management, SMU. Hayrat, also a Kazak in Xinjiang, joined the army for two years during his college life. He and his several friends created “Camel Guide”, a team offering service specially for those who want to visit Xinjiang.
“We are students from Xinjiang, and we love our hometown. Xinjiang is endeavoring to develop tourism to advance its economy. That’s why we choose to start our business in the tourism industry.” Dos said, although many people can sing the folk song the Wonderful Xinjiang, he found in his entrepreneurship they knew little about Xinjiang and thought it was too far to visit. He added, “It’s not the distance but the lack of communication and understanding. So we want to express our hospitality in this way and prove Xinjiang is not so far. Xinjiang welcomes everyone. And we hope everyone can know Xinjiang, like Xinjiang and then visit Xinjiang.”
At the end of last year, Dos and Hayrat hit it off and decided to slide to Xinjiang, thus leading to “Camel Brothers”. It is a long journey from Sichuan to Xinjiang. And there exist a lot of unpredicted dangers. So they had a warm-up lasting more than one month before they set out, running 10 km and sliding 15 km every day. They never wanted to give up and just exercised more and picked up some skills of surviving in the wild. 

Camel Brothers arriving in Xinjiang