Travel in China

After two long days of desert driving we arrived in Turpan, the second lowest place on the planet not underwater. And it was seriously hot. 43C in the shade is almost unbelievable for an Aberdonian, and makes it difficult to leave the comfort of air conditioning. We only spent one night here because of the heat, but we still visited the most important tourist spot: the Jiaohe ruins.

This is basically the remains of a whole town on an island in the middle of a river, and it is remarkably well preserved. You really get the feel of the place walking the streets and seeing the buildings, the Buddhist monastery is the best one imho. But it is easy to see why the town was abandoned, the heat even at 7pm is stifling, and combined with the various people trying to invade it at regular intervals it must have seemed like a poor choice of home.

From Turpan we headed for the relative cool of Dunhuang, a small tourist town with big tourist prices. Here as well China has been developing the town, much of the centre is brand new, with lots of shops aimed at well-heeled tourists.

Dunhuang is one of these towns which manages to be located near lots of interesting sites: top billing goes to the Mogao caves. This is one of those historic places which it is impossible not to visit as it houses some of the most impressive Buddhist art in the world. Even those of us not normally taken by "old stuff" really enjoyed it, I personally found it astonishing, particularly since it survived the Cultural Revolution unscathed. The tour guide shows you perhaps ten of the caves, with interesting stories about each one, this takes about one to one and a half hours. There are over 700 caves, this should give you an idea of the size of the place.

Those who were interested also visited the singing sand dunes. Now you would expect to just drive to the dunes, get out and have a look around, yes? Not in tourist China you don't. You drive to the roadblock 200m away, then walk to the ticket office and pay 120 yuan just to get in. Then once inside, you pay for anything and everything else: regimented camel rides, quad biking, even sand boarding costs you money. I decided to save my money for other things and started to walk back to get a taxi to the town with two others. The cheeky taxi drivers tried to charge us 50% more to get back than to take us there, so we decided to walk the 40 minutes back.

Good thing too, as soon after a local bus drove past us and tooted for us to get on, so we did. For one measly yuan per person we had a great leisurely city tour of the places tourists don't get to see, and we were dropped off right in the centre of town. I highly recommend just getting on a bus in a strange Chinese town, as you start to see just a little behind the facade of "New China" plastered over the main streets.

We have now pretty much left the Silk Road, as we are heading south towards Lhasa. We just spent a night in Golmud, a town rather unfairly described by the Lonely Planet guidebook as only fit for road engineers and escaped convicts. Ok, so it isn't the most beautiful of towns, and the view from our nice hotel window at night was of five brothels plying their trade, but it had a certain gutter charm to it.

Next stop of consequence is Lhasa, but to get there we have to drive overnight tonight, due to weird Chinese roadworks which close the road completely during the day. No fun for us, but even less fun for Tim and Cheryl who have to drive us.

Pics are flag at bushcamp at lake Bosten, view of Turpan depression from truck, and the Great Wall of China, non-tourist end.