Month: July 2024

When we arrived in Xi’an, we got a taxi and asked the driver to take us to a hotel. He took us to the Hilton, which is very expensive by … Read more

We got a taxi to the Big Wild Goose Pagoda where Xuan Zang returned from India in 645 to translate the Buddhist texts brought from India and write his Great … Read more

Day 53 (6th July) Jiayuquan to Xi’an The hotel booked a flight to Xi’an for us, let us stay in the room until 14.30 and then took us in their … Read more

There was no problem getting tickets for the train from Dunhwang back to Jiayuquan and, as opposed to the 380 yuan coming it was only 129 leaving for “hard seats”. … Read more

We got a taxi to the Visitor Centre of the Mingsha Shan (Mingsha Mountain) with magnificent sand dunes hundreds of metres high, a temple and the Crescent Lake. The temple … Read more

Day 50 (3rd July) Dunhwang We got a taxi to the Mogao Caves Visitor Centre and joined about a million other people in the queue for tickets, about twice as … Read more

The lovely people at the Ming Nuojin hotel got us a taxi to the fort (guancha), and I now know three words in Chinese. It should have cost us about … Read more

The train arrived precisely on time at 21.12 and, having come from Urumqi, was already full. It was the “fast train” which took 9 hours to get to Jiayuquan as … Read more

A long and boring day. The hotel called the genial taxi driver from the previous day and he took us to the Tu-Lu-Fan-Bei (North Turpan) railway station where we passed … Read more