Lanchou

13^th April Thursday

From our experience, except Beijing railway, getting train tickets was not an easy task in other parts of China. Ticketing at Xian was not fully centralized at Xian train station. We had to find our way to specific banks in Xian to purchase advance train ticket to Lanchou.

After putting 2 days in Xian, we continued to move on to Lanchou to view the great sight of Yellow River. Trip to Lanchou was not a pleasant one. We bumped into bad weather, suffering from freezing cold snowflake.

Our main itinerary in visiting Lanchou was to visit its famous Buddhist caves - Bingling Si. These caves are carved into a canyon beside the Liujiaxia Reservoir on the Yellow River and can only be reached by boat at certain times of the year and too bad we were not at the right time of the year.

With this, we shortened our trip by just put up with an 8 hours day visit in Lanchou. We strolled along "Heping Lu" for Yellow River views. While we were there, the whole Heping Lu was being given a facelift for the coming peak season which would begin in May. We took cable car right over Yellow river to Baita Park, the opposite hills of the far bank to get a bird's-eye views of the city.

The most enjoyable thing that we did in Lanchou was tasted its well-known Beef Ramen. We went to a small Muslim's noodle shop. Inside the shop, there was only a few old table and chairs. The shop was managed by a few young cooks. Watching the cook using his hands swiftly pull and twist the flour, within second a bowl of handmade ramen noodle was made. It was the most delicious ramen we had ever tasted throughout our trip.

14^th - 15^th April

Getting train ticket on your own was extremely tough in Lanchou. Ticket selling was largely controlled by local black market. Out of no choice, we had to travel in sleeper bus to our following destination - Dunhuang. We ended up spending 29 hours of agony bus trip, which turned out to be our worst experience of the whole trip.

It was an unforgettable event to me, squeezing into a bus full of cargo and passengers inside up. The bus was running non stop for the first 22 hours with only minutes of pee break in the middle of no way. We were starved not only for food but also fresh air for we were suffocated by the chain smokers in the bus. The worst yet to come until our bus broke down half way and Jwee Seng had to help out in pushing the bus.

Regardless of the miserable hours in the bus, the view along the journey was fantastic. We experienced two extreme landscape when the highway cut through the Gansu province giving contradict scenarios of Gobi desert on our left and Tian San's snow mountain setting on our right.

16^th April

We arrived at Dunhuang's bus station at near midnight, after 29 hours of long miserable bus ride. Without much survey, we hopped in to the nearest hotel available at the bus station - Five Cycle hotel.

Dunhuang is an oasis town nothing more than a few streets surrounded by magnificent desert scenery and the culturally famous Mogao Caves, which listed in UNESCO World Heritage in 1987. The Mogao Caves, which is one of the great sites and archaeological discovery stories of the East along with the giant, spectacular "Ming Sai" singing sand dunes at the bottom of the street transformed this town into one of the main attractions along silk route.

We were awaked by loud morning workout music early in the morning. This was the disadvantage of staying in the vicinity of bus station. After grabbing a few bites of the local dumpling, we were lucky to find a half-loaded mini van waited anxiously to leave for Mogao Caves. Without much bargaining, we hopped on the van and started off our first itinerary, located 25km Southeast of Dunhuang.

The basic entrance fees for Mogao Caves cost 55yuan/person, which included guided tour for a group of 25-30 tourists conducted in the morning between 8:30 to 10am.

We were told that, initially there were thousand of caves, however today only 492 survived in recognizable form. Presently, many were off-limits, either considered no longer of significant value or too sexually explicit for visitors. The painting and statues of the caves traces the development of art over the centuries, from one dynasty to the next.

One can pay extra premium 60 to 240Y per cave and per person to see some of the "special" caves, which contains sexually explicit Tantric art, 60 caves were classified as such. Only a few caves were left open doors, especially cave with its massive 34.5m tall Buddha while others were mostly locked. By the time we visit, the tall Buddha cave no. 96 was under renovation, we didn't manage to get a glimpse of this huge Buddha.

We were allowed to view more than 10 caves in less than 2 hours guided tour. However, if one does not care about overlong cultural explanations by the guides, most likely can see much more caves by jumping from one group to another.

Most of the caves were locked all the time. The guides kept hold of the keys to the caves and would choose an itinerary between the 30 normal caves based on their preference. They would lock the caves after every visit, the purpose was mainly to prevent the effect of sun rays fading the color of the valuable art pieces in the caves. Therefore, for better vision it was advisable to bring own touch.

We were very impressed by the astonishing religious art works in the caves. The color of the wall paintings and the statues of Buddha was still vividly stand out showing no sign of fading even after nearly 2000 years. We were told that the color used for these painting was natural essence extracted from different types of stone.

Singing Sand dunes

In the late afternoon, we had our first encounter with the major sand dunes of China - Dunhuang's Singing Sand dunes and Crescent Lake. It took us 20 minutes in a motor cab to reach the place, situated downtown.

We followed the tips from Passplanet, a backpacker's travelling site and were successfully sneaked into the sand dunes without paying entrance fees of 20 yuan/person. The direction given was to divert from the main entrance through a side path and walked between fields to come to wired fencing, once crossed over this wired bar, we were in sand dunes territory.

Walking on sand dune was not an easy task, we ended up riding camels up & down the sand dunes. The camel rides might be a bit expensive at 80yuan/camel however we enjoyed it very much.

Later, we paid 10 yuan on sand sliding. We had to struggle to climb to hundred feet's high sand dune. It was a tiring hike indeed, we had to sit down to catch our breath before sliding down on sand sleds. When standing on top of the dunes, I was truly moved overseeing the panoramic view of this desert.

We spent 3 days in Dunhuang before leaving to Turfan. After the bus ride nightmare, we decided no more sleeper buses. There was no train station in Dunhuang, we had to travel in 2 1/12 bus ride to reach its neighborhood town - Liuyuan the nearest train station.

While waiting for our bus to Liyuan's at Dunhuang's bus station, I overheard a Canadian couple having problem in buying bus tickets to Liuyuan. Language is definitely the main stumbling block for Westerner travelling in China. I approached them and helped them in getting their tickets. Later, we ended up travelling together to Turfan.

Surprisingly, it was very easy to get hard sleeper in Liuyuan, there was a tourist train operated from Liuyuan to Urumqi. The train was very new and there were a few pretty train attendants greeted us to the train. The train was nearly empty when we board. It was definitely much more comfortable travelling by train than sleeper bus. We took another 10 hours train ride from Dunhuang to Turfan.

Photo Gallery

Next - Turfan

Homepage