Blogs from Gansu, China, Asia

Gansu is a long province east of Xinjiang where the Silk Road tracks bottleneck between the mountains of the Tibetan plateau and mountains of Mongolia .The area is called the Hexi Corridor (“Her-she”) and is mostly stony desert with oasis towns along its length. Strong winds here have made it a major ‘wind farm’ area of China with thousands of huge wind turbines along the rail tracks. DUNHUANG Some of the rich merchants in this corridor have become ‘patrons of the arts’ over the centuries supporting Buddhists sculptors and painters. There was a lot of religious tolerance during this period. The result is many cave art grottoes. The most famous is the World Heritage site at Dunhuang. Unfortunatly, no cameras were allows inside and you could only go in with registered guide. However, well worth the ... read more

I have spent the last four days in minority-dominated and mountainous Western China. First stop was Xi’ning, the capital of Qinghai province. I sat next to some interesting people during the sixteen hour journey (no more beds were available) from Luoyang. There was the father with his two young sons, and a friendly, portly, middle-aged man. I slept for the first two hours or so. Upon awakening, I began to chat with my fellow passengers, and deliberately tried to make my voice Uighur-sounding. Apparently the ploy worked – the man with his sons thought I was a north-western Chinese ethnic minority, even after speaking to me. And this with only a two-and-a-half week beard! Of course, I told them the reality of my Americanness. I can see why my new friend was mistaken. Qinghai is full ... read more

Until this point we had decided you can tell a lot about your future journey by the outside of the bus and the attitude of the driver. We hopped on our next sleeper bus and were asked to remove our shoes which we did excitedly assuming this bid positive signs for our 11 hour trip. Oh how wrong we were! As we got started on our very bumpy trip, we are actually convinced that we were literally driving off-road directly through the rocky desert, the driver turned on his version of an aircon or what we would call the fan. Not only was the air coming out hot (we measured it with our travel thermometer the next morning and it reached 39 degrees) but it stunk like a combination of a baby’s nappy and off milk. ... read more

After a quite pleasant and normal 5 hour bus ride we arrived in the desert town of Dunhuang. The trip from Jiauyugaun was spectacular as we had the front seats of the bus and an unobstructed view of the expansive mountains and desert sands in front, the further west we drove the hotter it got outside and by the end the whole road was pretty much a mirage. Our guesthouse was 10 minutes out of town at the very base of the giant sand dunes for which Dunhuang is famed. Nested amongst the trees we had our own little log cabin with a verandah and hammocks outside and we could hear the camels not far away waiting to take people up the dunes. On our first evening we went the short distance into town which actually ... read more

Gangu, 27 juli 2011 We waren al vroeg op pad vandaag, want we wilden de Da Xiang Shan bezoeken, een heilige berg met een reusachtig Boeddhabeeld in Gangu. Na dit bezoek zouden we verder doorreizen naar Luomen waar we wilden overnachten. De taxi die we vóór het hotel aanhielden, bracht ons naar het Nanhu qichezhan, het kleine busstation van waaruit kleine busjes vertrekken naar o.a. Gangu. Dit bleek een merkwaardig stationsgebouw dat eigenlijk tot niets diende of toch voor ons geen duidelijke functie had: de conductrices verkopen alle bustickets op de bus, en alle passagiers gaan rechtstreeks naar de bus zonder het busstation aan te doen! We hadden eerst naar goede gewoonte geprobeerd bustickets te kopen in het busstation, maar daar liet men ons weten dat die enkel in de bus verkocht werden. Dit is tegenwoordig ... read more