Blogs from Gansu, China, Asia - page 4

Gansu province is a place full of wonders, as all the locations that are scattered in the desert. The feeling that I had was indescribable, especially when I visited the beautiful Mogao grottoes. In the far and remote west of the country just before the autonomous Region of Xinjiang. I stopped for a few days in the city of Dunhuang which was situated some 25 km southeast of the caves. The sight was of tremendous beauty carved out on the slope of the Mount Mingsha. This feeling of splendor and seclusion soon dropped as I approached to the entrance of the caves. Masses of tourists waited in line their turn before entering the grottoes. This was the first negative aspect of this place and, unfortunately, it was prohibited to take photos while inside the caves. From ... read more

As one of the iconic towns along the Silk Road Dunhuang is incredibly popular, as the thousands upon thousands of domestic tourists proved to us. It's easy to see why so many people make the long journey out here, the sights are quite special. First up for us was the Mogao Caves, or at least that was the plan. We knew there is a limit of 6000 visitors per day, and that tickets sold out quickly, but were taken aback when we got to the ticket office on Friday evening to be told there were no tickets at all for the next several days - more days than we were staying, merde !! There was one option left - what are called "emergency tickets". We had no idea what these were but could buy 2 for ... read more

Since leaving Hong Kong we've felt a bit rushed for quite a lot of the time. Booking trains and hotels in the high season takes more advanced planning than we're used to, especially in and between Shanghai, Beijing and Xi'an. We then had a couple of one night stays after longish journeys. So we're now going to have at least a couple of stops that are a day or two longer than they need to be for the things we're going to see. The first of these is Zhangye. We were happy to see the back of Lanzhou and leaving from the massive, new, almost empty West Station (more platforms (25) than daily departures (13)) was a pleasure. We had no idea that the journey over and through the Qilian Mountains was going to be so ... read more

The MaijiShan Grottoes are the only reason to come to TianShui, but they're a good enough reason to make the journey. For the first time on this trip we're getting the feeling of being a bit off the beaten track. Nobody speaks English, there are no English menus, though Atsuko can read enough for us to have a guess at what we're getting. As has nearly always been the case wherever we've been people go out of their way to help. We're also a bit of an attraction and get people staring and quite a few students wanting to have their photo taken with us.... read more

Oh Xiahe. A place in China that had so much character and proved to be one of our favourite places in China despite it being the least Chinese place we had visited. Thats not saying much about China is it? On the contrary we really enjoyed our time spent in China. This was just one of our favourites. Writing this as we leave the Gansu province makes us feel a little sad as we sure will miss this place and do hope to return one day. Pronounced Shaarr-huh, the 'huh' part said with a real american football player sound, almost from the depths of your stomach. We found this place when looking for places in China off the beaten track when reading about China in Hong Kong. We came across a blog written by a girl ... read more