dunhuang ho

my sleepy brain and cold fingers are just about co-ordinated enough for a quick entry, so i might write this in point form, but i'm sure you'll understand that this place is just as lovely and amazing as all the others have been so far.....i'm just buggered.

our shortest train ride yet, on the 7th (the eve of kt's birthday) - only 13 hours or so. another cramped hard sleeper, but it was an overnight trip and therefore relatively painless as we could just sleep most of the way. what also made it more fun was making friends with the two american girls in the cabin next to us, who had just been trekking in pakistan, and then to kashgar and urumqi briefly. sounds like pakistan is amazing (maybe i'll add it to the eastern-european/middle-eastern itinerary - lots more freezing cold mountains, yay!).
i woke kt up the next morning with the delicious birthday treat of a chocolate oreo with a lighter on top for a candle, serenading her with "happy birthday". the flame on the lighter was about five centimetres high, so she blew it out quickly so it wouldn't be too much of a fire hazard.

dunhuang turned out to be colder and more expensive than we'd hoped; we were shivering in our jackets as ripul, one of the american girls, helped us bargain the hotel down to $130 for a twin room. we couldn't seem to find any hostels or places with dorms, so we reluctantly "treated" ourselves again.

kt and i headed out a little later to get some food from a great cafe down the road called charley johng's. anyone who's been there will recommend it, because as well as serving great food (both western and chinese, but it's very spicy, so watch out), they have lots of valuable tourist info, and friendly staff who can hook up a camel tour for you. charley himself runs a guesthouse about six ks out of town, which is where we're staying now. much cheaper, and a really nice friendly atmosphere.

after we'd eaten, we hired some bikes from across the road and headed out to see the sand dunes. after giving it our best go to find the end of the fence (lonely planet said it had an end) and sneak in that way without paying the entrance fee, all we managed to do was get chased off some farmer's land, and yelled at by some guys laying concrete (which we nearly rode into). defeated, we went back to the gate and paid the massive entrance fee (120 yuan). i decided for us that it wasn't a good idea to walk all the way up the monstrous sand dunes, so we got a camel ride up. as a birthday treat, i paid for kt's. another expensive thing, but hey, dunhuang's that kind of town, it seems.

the camels were pretty fun, but after we got off them and slogged up the rest of the sand dune, and paid to slide down it on a glorified packing crate, i'd had enough of shelling out cash. we got back on the camels and went and saw crescent moon spring, which was lovely but a little less impressive after lake kanas and tian chi. we walked around the pagoda for a while, and i drank some sugary herbal tea from a can (overpriced here at an outrageous 10yuan, chi-ching chi-ching).

tired, we headed back to the hotel on the bikes, and later that night explored the night markets. more touristy crap, really, although some of it was pretty of course. you just get a little bored of seeing the same things for sale wherever you go. i know, it's pathetic, i've been here two weeks and already i'm a whinging jaded whitey with more money than most of the locals will ever see. but it does get tiring being yelled at and harrassed constantly to buy stuff. maybe it's just that kt and i aren't really shoppers, yet we constantly find ourselves in the markets. oh well.

today, along with kelly and ripul (our american friends), we headed to the mogao caves, which are buddhist grottoes. kt will remember more of the information than me, so you should check her blog (www.travelblog.org/Bloggers/ktw) if you actually want the history stuff, but what i can tell you is that our english-speaking guide, sunny, was very informative and friendly, and told us all sorts of cool things about the incredible buddha and boddhisaatva sculptures in the caves, as well as the paintings. so many things were missing because of the incredible arrogance of western archaeologists, who came and pillaged the area, as they have so many sacred and beautiful places in the world. many of the statues and paintings are now scattered all over europe and the united states. one of the buddhas was the third-largest buddha in china, at 36 metres tall. impressive.
the artwork changed dramatically between the different centuries and dynasties, and in one of the caves was largely tibetan, as dunhuang was taken over by tibet at one point during it history.

we had a little picnic and then looked in the museum, which had some replica caves. unfortuntely you're not allowed to take photos of either these or the real thing, but it's nice in a way, as it adds to the specialness of going to visit them (and paying the huge entrance fee). i guess, if i'm being cynical (which it seems i am in this entry), i could add that it also means a few more people will buy the postcards with the pictures of artwork from the grottoes on them. kt, who has become a postcard fiend, bought a couple of packets.
sunny also mentioned to us that maybe in four or five years the caves will be closed to tourists, and only researchers will be allowed there, as humidity from people's breath and general tourist stuff has added to the degradation of the caves. it's so dry here that they've actually been preserved fairly well, but even so, they're obviously becoming more decrepit. i feel pretty lucky to have come here when i did. the caves were incredibly peaceful, and made me really want to read more about buddhism to understand it better. seeing all these amazing things, i feel so ignorant.


right now, i'm sitting at charley johng's guest house, using the free internet. there's some sort of reggae in the background, and there's a fire going in the courtyard. my belly is full of noodles, and it's a clear night so later we should be able to see stars. tomorrow we're going on a camel trek through the dunes overnight, with an aussie guy (from sydney) called david, who's also staying here, and maybe kelly and ripul too. after that, it's off to jiayuguan to see some of the great wall!

---

---