Going west

---

Thursday August 31st

We arrived in Xian train station in the morning but there was still 8 hours to go. I had noodles again and passed the time by reading my LP India. We arrived in Lanzhou about 10 minutes late at 3:40. The sleeper bus to Dunhuang left at 5PM so I ran to the bus station but the tickets were sold out. The lady told me "Please take me to the train station" to get a train to Dunhuang. She was cute so I was more than happy to take her out but she wouldn't move. I went to the train station to try to get a ticket but after waiting 30 minutes I was told that there were only tickets available for next morning, which would bring me in Dunhuang at around midnight.

I decided not to take it and decided to try my luck at another bus station where they have departure at 6PM. I ran there but there again it was sold out for the day. I was pretty pissed off by this point so I just walked around for a while. I eventually made my way to the train station and waited for 30 minutes again only to be told that there was only tickets for tomorrow evening now. I walked back to the first bus station to try to get a ticket for tomorrow but through gesticulation she told me to come tomorrow.

It was pretty late by now and I had only noodles for the day so I went in a restaurant and had sichuan style eggplants (one of my best discovery in China). I tried to look for a place to stay as it was obvious that I was stuck in the Dustbowl for 24 hours. All the places with cheap rooms were full (they had expansives suites available though...) or I couldn't find them. In the end I decided to splurge and got myself a single room in a 3 star hotel since it was the only place I could find. The room was really comfy, the western-style toilet had a seal that said sterilized on it (which is good because when unclean, western toilets are pretty disgusting whereas unclean squat toilet doesn't really bother me) and there was a clean bath. I took my first bath since I started the trip and just relaxed in the room.

You know you got a good room in China when "massage" girls call you. They were getting annoying because I was getting calls every 15 minutes so I cut the line and fell asleep.

Friday September 1st

First thing I did when I woke up was to go down to the bus station and get myself a ticket for the 5PM bus. Then I bought some street pastry for breakfast which was pretty good. I chilled in my room for a while and took another bath. Hey I'm paying good money for that room I gotta make good use of it. At around 11 I checked out. I met other foreigners at the reception desk who told me they had been to White Pagoda Hill, the only touristy attraction in Lanzhou, the day before and said it wasn't worth it. Thus I decided to do nothing again and went to an internet cafe.

I stopped at 3PM and had lunch/dinner in the night market street and walked around the city for about an hour. Lanzhou is not a very nice place to be so I was relieved to walk in the sleeper bus at 5PM. I got a decent bed but the sheets were a bit filthy but hey, it was comfy and long enough for me so I can't complain. I tried reading but I fell asleep pretty quickly while the terrain became more and more desertlike as we went west. We were going through the famous Hexi Corridor which links Eastern China with Central Asia. I was beginning to leave China proper.

Saturday September 2nd

I arrived in Dunhuang 17 hours I left, at around 10AM. I had slept pretty well so I was ready to go see the famous Mogao Caves right away. However in the last week and a half I've had the urge to leave China so I decided not to sleep in Dunhuang and get another sleeper bus to Turpan, in Xinjiang province. I was ready to move on to something else but I still wanted to get a taste of western China and uighur culture.

As soon as I got out of the bus station I met a Bulgarian guy and an ozie talking with a CITS (chinese state travel agent) about getting a cab to the cave so I told them I was interested. Within a few minutes everything was arranged. The ozie wasn't coming with us as he was just trying to help the bulgarian set things up so it cost us 40RMB each for taxi return (including waiting time). Before leaving I got my ticket for Turpan.

The Mogao Caves is one of the most important Silk Route archeological site. It is a series of caves with Buddist statues and painting that dates from the earliest days of Buddhism in China in the 4-14th century. It was sealed at some point in the past and was just rediscovered by a monk in the 19th century. Explorers passed by Dunhuang and bought anything that could be brought back to Europe from the monks but there is still lots of wonderful arts in the caves.

Bobby, the bulgarian was a friendly bloke, we got along quite well. It took about 30 minutes to reach the Caves and we told the driver that we'd be back by 1PM. We went to buy ticket but they told us that there were no english guide until noon which was too late for us. We tried asking around if there was any way we could get a guide we were told that there was a french guide starting soon. There is a different price for foreigners (to pay for foreign-language speaking guides) but when we decided to buy the ticket anyway they figured we wanted just a ticket for the chinese guide since they didn't understood that I spoke french and that I could translate the stuff for Bobby so they gave us only the normal ticket.

We didn't think it was gonna be a problem and were just glad to save 20RMB. We walked all the way toward the entrance but the french guide told us in a quite bitchy tone that we didn't have the right ticket and therefore couldn't go with her. "C'est bien dommage mais c'est impossible.". You can tell by her attitude that she learned french in Paris. I tried to ask if we could pay the 20RMB extra so that we could go with her but she wouldn't have any of it.

So we were forced to join one of the chinese group and not understand anything about the history of the caves. We went in about 10-12 small caves with buddhist painting on the wall. It is very interesting to see how the earliest paintings had a very obvious indian influence (people with colored skin for example) whereas the latter cave were more typical chinese. We were both pretty annoyed since we couldn't understand what the guide was saying. Buddhist art is full of symbolism, if you don't understand the meaning of the drawing then the art is beautiful but meaningless. It was thus a bit of a frustrating experience, although definately worth it even without if we didn't understand what the guide was saying. I'll definately try to catch a book on the Silk Road history when I can (China is not the place to get that, unless you read mandarin and enjoy party propaganda).

We couldn't see the most popular caves such as the Tantric Art caves since those need separate entry fee which is quite unfortunate. We didn't exactly follow our guide all the time though. Since we didn't understand anything anyway we just wandered around and went from group to group to see as many caves as possible so instead of the usual 6-7 we saw 10-12 small caves (caves are locked so you need a guide to open them so in theory you've got a fixed group and follow that guide but in practice it's pretty easy to slip in and out of groups). Next we went to see the Big Buddhas (one sitting down, the other lying) which were about 30m high/long. Very impressive, the sitting one seemed even bigger than Leshan's Buddha because it is in a building so you have to almost break your neck to see the top of the sitting one. The lying one was interesting as it wasn't fat. Then again I don't know the significance of that since we didn't understand what they were saying.

Unfortunately pictures are not allowed so I can't have pictures of the Caves but I took some of the area around the caves to show how barren the area is. I'm wondering whether it was more fertile back in the day or they decided to build those caves there so that they'd be isolated and hard to find so that only the serious pilgrims would find them.

We went to the museum after which had some reconstitution of the caves as well as artifacts found on the sites. Pretty interesting but we were short on time as we had told our cab driver to wait for us at 1PM. On the ride back Bobby stopped at the plane booking place because he was thinking about flying to Urumqi, then Kashgar today to be in the city in time for the Sunday Market. I told him I'd be at John's Cafe for a while.

I went to John's Cafe and had some fried vegetable with noodles while reading my LP India. At some point I got bored of waiting and figured Bobby managed to get a flight that was leaving soon so I went around town just to see how it was like. I ended up eating a bit of spicy chicken in another cafe before going to the bus station for my 6PM bus. I went to a public bathroom, where you have to pay 0.5RMB when you go out. I only had a 1RMB note so I asked for change but he told me he had none. You know I don't care about 0.5RMB but when the guy who receives 0.5RMB note all the freaking day tells me he has none I kinda feel like he is trying to screw me so I walked away without paying until he magically found a 0.5RMB note.

I bought some fruits for the journey at the bus station and got into the bus. When I entered and found my bed I immediately understood that the journey wouldn't be pleasant. The bed was made so that an average chinese woman would feel cramped and uncomfortable. There was no way I could lie down in there unless I was in foetal position. When the bus started I realized that this wasn't even going to be okay because it made my leg bang up on a metal bar. There was no way I could lie and be comfortable and no way I could stand because the roof was too close.

A friendly and outgoing chinese-malay girl named Tienh started talking to me. She's travelling around China for a few months in between 2 contracts and didn't seem to have any problem with the beds. After 2 hours of riding, when I was in pain I asked hour if she was enjoying the bus ride she said "So far so good". Grrr, I hate small people.

I seriously considered giving up and just go sleep on the floor but something (pride?) kept me from doing it. I didn't really sleep that night. Just sorta fell asleep for a few seconds then woke up a few seconds/minutes later because of leg pain. Ohhh how I was looking forward to get into that oasis of Turpan.

---

Photos

Around Mogao Cave
Feels like in Star Wars doesn't it?

Around Mogao Cave 2
Can see a bit of the caves on the wall. Amazing that they were built in such a harsh environment.

Sunset in the desert
In between Dunhuang and Turpan, on the highway.