We left our trusty Overlanders on a bit of a low, altitude-wise that is at the 2nd lowest point on Earth in Turpan! From there it was onwards and upwards on a rather long drive across the last of the desert to Dunhuang. En route we got some glimpses of just how much of a power-house China is becoming with vast wind and solar farms stretching as far as the eye could see, we had all heard stories of China building a 'coal power station a day' but these enormous renewable energy projects told a very different story.
Dunhuang is home to the Mogao Caves. We all headed off to visit what are colloquially known as the '1000 Buddha Caves', which were sacred Buddhist shrines built in to small caves in the soft sandstone rock.
Inside the caves are beautiful paintings, carvings and statues of Buddha, his servants and followers of Buddhism. When the West first discovered the caves around 1912 they took many of the statues and paintings and documents they found back to their home countries so many of the treasures sit in the British Museum or at Harvard University, though the sad truth is that many of the ancient documents would have been destroyed in the Cultural Revolution had they not been 'relocated' but all theft aside we were able to enjoy the caves and the incredible works that remain there including a truly impressive Giant Buddha carved out of the rock, at 35m high it is the 2nd biggest seated Buddha in the world. In order to protect the ancient paintwork no photography is allowed inside the caves so I've plundered Google – better still go and visit yourself as no photo does it justice!
Dunhuang also gave everyone the chance to hone their chopsticks skills at another Odyssey Group meal, Chinese food is very different, very tasty and can be a bit tricky to master but we are all embracing it throughly and Jason, our local guide, has been introducing us to all the wonderful delicacies available across the country!
Our next stop was our first Chinese bushcamp at a little known attraction called The Great Wall of China! Obviously being as great as it is it stretches for rather a long way but we got our first sight of it at Jiayuguan, the very last outpost in the West and end of the wall. Some of our beliefs about the wall were debunked fairly quickly, it isn't a single wall but a series of fortifications and sections that spread from East to West. It also isn't visible from space, sadly, however it is massively impressive, a great feat of complex engineering and bits of it built at a time when our home countries either hadn't been 'discovered' or whose inhabitants were still getting their heads around the whole 'iron' thing.
En route to camp we stopped at Jiayuguan Fort, a heavily restored ancient castle designed to keep out the great (and often terrifying) tribes of Mongolia and Central Asia, including some of the characters we learned about in Central Asia such as Timur and Ghengis Khan. It looks almost brand new, the Chinese have a habit of repairing their ancient monuments to the point where it's hard to believe that they are ancient at all, but it was still an impressive site and did provide us with an opportunity to watch some amazing local acrobatics and try out some Great Wall segways!
We then got our first chance to walk on the wall itself with a stiff uphill climb before setting up camp for the night right beside the wall, a beautiful spot.
The next day we followed the wall for a while as we headed down the Hexi corridor, a narrow valley of agricultural land. The more Central Asian part of China was vanishing and by the time we reached Zhangye, our stop for the night, we began to see signs of the China we all had in our heads, especially with a visit to the Dafosi temple with its large wooden reclining Buddha and traditional Chinese pagoda roofs. We were still firmly on the Silk Road, Marco Polo had lived here for a year during the 13th century.
The Yellow River was our next stop, it's the 2nd largest river in China and famous for its terrible floods, an important part of Chinese history and identity. We camped for the 2 nights at a beautiful spot by a large reservoir on a bed of soft grass which turned out to be the pasture for local shepherds. After a bit of negotiation and arm waving the local villagers not only accepted our presence they near adopted us, taking us on in tug-of-war and building fires for us in the evening for dancing, singing and a bit of old-fashioned cross-cultural interaction!
Our main purpose for visiting the Yellow River was to catch a boat over to the Bingling Si caves, similar to the Mogao Caves we'd already seen in Dunhuang these were far more remote, accessible only by boat, built in a canyon by the river. There are a series of caves filled with more beautiful Buddhist artwork culminating in a huge statue of Maitreya, the 'future Buddha' built in to the rock face. Everyone enjoyed it immensely, particularly the lack of crowds due to its location.
There is also a small Buddhist temple there and possibly the nicest Monk in the world gave everyone a tour and a cup of tea.
It was a slightly wet goodbye to The Yellow River as we woke up to constant rain, cook group did a sterling job of keeping everyone's spirits up with pancakes and then we all set about setting up Penelope's sandmats (more 'mudmats' in this situation) to stop her sinking on the way out, we were all thoroughly soaked by the time we got safely back on the tarmac but it was only a short drive to our next destination: Xiahe, aka 'Little Tibet.'
Xiahe (pronounced Sha-hur) is a fair distance from The Autonamous Region of Tibet but you wouldn't know it, the minute you turn off the main road you feel as though you have hopped across the mountains on to the Tibetan Plateaux. The town in a little enclave of Tibetan culture built around the Lobrang Tibetan Monastary, the largest outside Tibet itself. The little town is something of a time warp, China is fast becoming a very modern country, ridding itself of the old in favour of new high rise homes, state of the art motorways and big shopping malls, but in Xiahe goats still wander the streets mixing with Tibetan monks in their red robes, as fascinated with us as we were with them!
The town has a wonderful spiritual feel, we visited the vast monastery on a tour led by one of the monks who took us in to some of the temples that smelled of yak butter candles, old wood and burning juniper berries. We learned about the teaching tradition of the monastery and saw some of the youngest monks learning the ancient traditions of their religion. It is very much a living, breathing place, not a ruin or relic like the other sites we'd visited across the Silk Road and many of the group rated it as one of their favourite places they'd visited in China so far. It was also a good opportunity for a bit of retail therapy in many of the small dusty shops selling ancient Chinese and Tibetan artefacts.
The scenery out of Penelope's windows has been changing rapidly as we've crossed the country and our next stop marked the halfway point as the geographical centre of China: Lanzhou. It's a bustling, busy city that gave us a place to rest on our long drive across towards Xi'an and also offered us the opportunity to visit one of the best 'Night Markets' in China with an array of weird and wonderful street food to choose from including sheep's heads, various bits of pigs, Western-Chinese kebabs, cold noodles and mangosteen fruit.
Well fed and in some cases a little hungover we headed South-East to the official end of the Silk Road and home to the unofficial '8th Wonder of the World:' Xi'an. The scenery grew more impressive as we headed through the hills eclipsed only by the road itself which was an epic feat of engineering which tunnelled its way through mountains and bridged its way over valleys to create a fast motorway through incredible terrain.
Xi'an is home to the world-famous Terracotta Warriors and we headed off an hour outside the city to see them, they are a huge tourist draw after numerous exhibitions across the world and tourists both local and foreign pour in to see them every day, but the crowds and the heat didn't detract from quite how amazing they truly are. They were built by the Emperor Qin in 200BC, who also found time to build much of the Great Wall of China and unite China in to a single country for the first time. At the age of 13 he began work on his mausoleum and commissioned an entire army of terracotta warriors, archers, generals, acrobats, musicians and horses to be built, housed underground ready for him to continue his rule in the afterlife.
The site in a work in progress, 2000 figures have been unearthed since their discovery by some farmers digging a well in 1974 and they believe there are up to 9000 in total. Many people know the famous image of the rows of warriors facing East ready for battle, what most of us didn't know is that the figures have all been painstakingly reconstructed as they were all found in pieces destroyed either by the ceilings collapsing on them or more likely enemy troops smashing and burning them all.
The site houses just a fraction of the full army, most are still buried underground, the work has stopped until the technology exists to protect the delicate paint that quickly disintegrates when it is exposed to the air, only a couple of soldiers still have any of the brightly coloured paint left on them that gives us a glimpse of what they must have looked liked originally.
More impressive still is that the figures famously have individual features and are most likely modelled on real people, down to their palm print and finger nails, even the horses have teeth made so accurately that they allow the archeologists to tell the age of the animal it was based on.
A truly awesome sight it really does deserve the title of unofficial “8th Wonder of the World”
Xi'an offered lots of other delights to keep us busy too, it's a bustling, modern city, much more Western than we'd be used to with exciting things like Macdonalds and KFCs which annoyed and delighted the group in equal measure. It seems the further East we go the more Western it gets, ironically enough. The Muslim Quarter offered some fantastic street food and hoards of locals enjoying a family night out, many people headed off to cycle around the city's impressive walls and Gary enjoyed flying kites with the locals in the park, something Xi'an is famous for.
We are now over halfway across this vast country and Xi'an marks the end of the Silk Road, this was the point that traders would come to to access the vast array of delights that China had to offer. We've had a chance to sample some of those too and we've settled in to China's rhythms and idiosyncrasies, it's a world very different from our own but the people have been so kind, welcoming and curious about us and with a few thousand kilometres still between us and Beijing there is still a lot to enjoy in this amazing country.
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| We're a big fan of wind turbines |
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| China is also home to some of the biggest trucks we've ever seen! |
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| Outside the caves |
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| Giant Buddha |
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| Reclining Buddha |
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| Dinner |
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| Jiayuguan fort |
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| Still on the Silk Road |
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| Acrobatics show at the fort |
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| Don't try this at home with your best Ming Dynasty tableware! |
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| The crowds sheltering from the sun |
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| Anita segway-ing |
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| Tom cornering |
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| Making tasty peanut toffee stuff at the fort |
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| That's a really great wall |
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| Maggie hand-standing |
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| Gary and Tom at the top |
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| Penelope vs the Wall |
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| Great Wall bushcamp |
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| Dafosi Temple |
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| Gary and Jo-Ann got invited to a local children's music school - the Chinese people have been amazingly friendly |
The Yellow River was our next stop, it's the 2nd largest river in China and famous for its terrible floods, an important part of Chinese history and identity. We camped for the 2 nights at a beautiful spot by a large reservoir on a bed of soft grass which turned out to be the pasture for local shepherds. After a bit of negotiation and arm waving the local villagers not only accepted our presence they near adopted us, taking us on in tug-of-war and building fires for us in the evening for dancing, singing and a bit of old-fashioned cross-cultural interaction!
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| Bushcamping at the Yellow River - Gary and Jo-Ann show us their moves |
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| Tug'o'war competition - Anita, Maggie and Tom |
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| Simon, Sue & Jackie |
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| Gary referees |
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| Some local visitors get involved |
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| Tom |
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| Local shepherds look on |
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| A photography frenzy - we're like celebrities here |
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| Tibetan monks pop by on their way to the local caves |
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| Jason teaches us about Chinese writing |
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| Istanbul to Beijing |
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| The locals arrive for a "Fire Party" |
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| Tom having a fire party for one |
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| Heading to the caves by boat |
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| Cave artwork |
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| Giant Maitreya carving (finally out of scaffolding after a couple of years!!) |
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| The nicest Monk in the world |
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| Tea time |
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| Toilet time |
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| Xiahe street |
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| Local goat |
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| Truck o' monks |
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| Gary holds court with the locals |
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| Chinese babies don't go in for nappies |
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| Young monk |
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| Waiting for our guide at the monastery |
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| Goats get everywhere |
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| Monks clearing the roof |
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| Our guide |
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| Some of the monks were as fascinated with us as we were with them |
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| In the winter the monks make sculptures out of yak butter wax to bring a bit of colour to the cold winter nights |
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| Turning the prayer wheels |
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| There is a 3km spiritual walk around the monastery with prayer wheels called the Kora |
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| Simon walking the Kora |
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| Sheep's head anyone? |
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| Noodles |
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| Tasty breads |
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| Snouts |
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| The Warriors |
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| Lined up for battle |
The site in a work in progress, 2000 figures have been unearthed since their discovery by some farmers digging a well in 1974 and they believe there are up to 9000 in total. Many people know the famous image of the rows of warriors facing East ready for battle, what most of us didn't know is that the figures have all been painstakingly reconstructed as they were all found in pieces destroyed either by the ceilings collapsing on them or more likely enemy troops smashing and burning them all.
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| Where a wooden carriage would have stood |
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| Warriors under repair |
The site houses just a fraction of the full army, most are still buried underground, the work has stopped until the technology exists to protect the delicate paint that quickly disintegrates when it is exposed to the air, only a couple of soldiers still have any of the brightly coloured paint left on them that gives us a glimpse of what they must have looked liked originally.
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| Archaeologists have managed to preserve a little paint on this warrior |
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| How the warriors look after excavation and before repair |
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| Warriors come in all shapes and sizes |
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| A middle-ranking official |
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| One of only 7 generals found |
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| Beautiful Drum Tower |
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| Old meets new |
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| Locals exercising in the park |
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| The Muslim Quarter |
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| Kebabs |
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| Some of Xi'ans famous kites |
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| Gary having a go |
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| A professional |
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