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Published: October 12th 2007
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so...
my birthday prezzie to myself was an overnight camel trek out into the Gobi Desert. For 300 kuai we got everything included, from a local guide to instant noodles served out of the cup around a fire.
It was a pretty amazing experience. Our guide, Li, has a face like a dried up fig - brown and wrinkly, and when his face relaxes you can see that the depths of his wrinkles are still pink - not tanned brown like the rest of him. His face crinkles up pretty easily in the glare of the desert, and he's quick with a smile or a song in the high falsetto opera style of China... a great bloke whose only English is "OK" and "sleep".
There were 3 of us on camel and Li on foot. Tegan in front, David (aussie living in Beijing) in the middle and me and my new camel friend Huang Hua (yellow flower) at the back.
Riding on a camel is pretty strange, not very smooth, but you get into a rhythm after a while and learn to use the stirrups a bit to take the pressure of your bum. We trekked about two hours,
out through the apricot and cotton fields, past women drying corn outside their houses and through a local graveyard full of tomb mounds covered in shiny chip packets for decoration and clothing, shoes and alcohol bottles strewn every which way (these are probably left for the ancestors but get blown about a bit in the legendary Gobi winds which blast this sand as far as Beijing in the springtime).
We went a fair way along the line between the sand dunes (Sha Shan) and the flat stony desert, out towards the mountains, then turned into the dunes. Li stopped the camels, pointed at a ginormous sand peak in front of us and said "OK" ... David speaks a bit of Putonghua, and I worked out that we were supposed to climb this megalith to watch the sunset. What!
Climbing sand dunes is no picnic... the air was cold but after a few minutes I was sweating... it was hard work, and we struggled up to one peak to find there was another larger one just behind it... and when we got there, Li pointed upwards and said something like "you keep going there's a better view up there, I'll
go back and make dinner"... Li looked like he'd been climbing sand dunes all his life, and we later found out he's been doing it for over 2 years, having moved to Dunhuang after his marriage. He's also trekked from Dunhuang all over Gansu and Xinjiang provinces to Kashgar, in a massive camel trek which took 7 months. What a character.
Walking along the spine of the sand dune felt pretty precarious, particularly since if we fell down the wrong side we'd have to climb all the way up again...
Anyway Gunk and I pushed on, and watched while David raced the sunset to the top. We stopped quite close to the top, the aim being to actually enjoy watching the sun go down, which we did.
Going down was a bit easier than up, my shoes kept filling up with the famous "five coloured sand" and feeling like they were a few sizes too small.
We got back to camp to find that Li had set up tents and made a small fire out of desert twigs, and was boiling up the reshui (hot water) for instant noodles... we feasted on coal-roasted potatos, bread that's like damper
and drank some beers under the stars - a great feeling to be sitting watching a fire for the first time in ages.
Li asked us if we wanted to get up early and walk to a special place to watch the sunrise. We were pretty buggered but thought "what the hell, never be here again" and said yes. To everyone's surprise Li slept in and didn't wake us up until 6am, which meant no time for the walk. Instead it was back on the camels after only a drink of hot 3-in1 coffee and some white bread, back through the dunes to climb a smaller sand monster for the sunrise. It was pretty cold out there in the morning, and the camels seemed restless, Li said they were hungry. But we hung out watching the sun come up and the shadows move for a while, then went back into town.
Back at Li's place his wife loaded us up with bags of their home-grown apples which we had to sneak back when she wasn't looking (too many!), then Charley finally came to pick us up & take us back to the hostel. We feasted and emptied the sand
from our shoes, and played some music by the fire until we finally reluctantly headed into Dunhuang to take a bus to Jiayuguan... thanks Charley! If you ever make it to Dunhuang - go and see Charley Johng.
The bus to Jiayuguan was pretty uneventful, apart from my struggle to maintain enough room for my knees what with the guy in front reclining and the guy behind digging his knees straight into my back... argh I am too tall for China. We did get our first glimpse of the Jiayuguan Fort - the legendary Western defence of the Middle kingdoms. Gansu is a funny shape, long and skinny, largely because there are mountain ranges on each side that are almost impassable. The Silk Road came down along the narrow part of Gansu - called the Hexi Corridor, and Jiayuguan was a vital part of the Silk Road. The Great Wall extended all the way out here, and its construction was begun in 7th century BC. So this morning we hired a taxi and headed straight for the sights.
Our taxi driver wisely suggested we go to the "overhanging Great Wall" first, and we were pleased to see that we
had the place to ourselves apart from 2 Chinese photographers we met up the top. Our camel-sore bodies struggled up the steps but the view was amazing.
This part of the wall had some repair work done in 1987 and again between 200-2007 but it's still pretty ancient-looking. Beyond the touristy section it fades into the distance, a line zig-zagging up through the mountains to the east, and along the plains to the Fort to the west. Wow. The only thing to spoil the experience was that someone had taken a crap on the top of one of the watchtowers. Really.
So we headed for the infinitely more touristy Jiyaguan Fort. This is one of the stereotypical travel photos of Western China - the earth-coloured Walls and Gate-towers rise straight up out of the dusty plains with towering snowy mountains in the background. Almost impossibly old, as far as man-made architecture goes. There are loads of signs about the Great Wall and how people should feel proud to be Chinese because of it... You can dress up in fake armour to have photos taken or shoot arrows from the top of the wall into targets or scarecrows in
the compound below. We avoided the groups of Chinese tourists and wandered around slowly, it's a pretty amazing place.
We also visited the museum, which was dedicated to the Great Wall (or Great Walls) as a whole, and combined information about conscription with agriculture and Silk Road economic history. Pretty good although not much info in English.
We're headed to Lanzhou on an overnight train then hoping to take a bus to Xiahe tomorrow morning...
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kachun
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sounded like a lot of fun there! reminding me of my gobi desert trip in mongolia