Hello again from Dunhuang, where the desert surrounds us on all sides. Ancient Silk Road travellers would form caravans to head across the desert by camel. The hundreds of miles of hot, hostile territory would be laden with dangers — not only the natural ones of heat exhaustion and lack of water, but also the risk of running into bandits or other tribes. They would spend days or weeks getting to the next trading post or oasis, arriving gratefully in places like Dunhuang for food, water, rest and supplies.
Today started with a lazy lie-in until almost noon. It felt luxurious to just relax, given the pace we’ve been going at all week, so I took full shameless advantage of it. Late morning, we packed up, checked out and had some lunch, and then headed into the desert that surrounds Dunhuang. Of course, we were travelling by comfortable private air-conditioned van instead of by caravan. But as the city gave way to sand, we started driving through terrain full of nothing but endless sand and scrubby brush.
Feeling hot, hot, hot
After driving for about fifteen minutes, we arrived at the Mingsha Sand Dunes. They’re known as the Singing Sand Dunes, because the echoes of the wind off the ridges of the dunes create a noise not dissimilar to a song. The dunes surround a literal desert oasis — a lake known as Crescent Moon Lake due to its shape.
It was the hottest part of the afternoon, and the sun beat down with a temperature of over 30 degrees.It probably would’ve made more sense to come out here earlier this morning, but oh well, when you’re on a tour, you do as the guide tells you. I grabbed sunscreen, hat and water, and resolved to make the best of it.
Quad biking on the dunes
At the dune park, there were a number of activities on offer. Most of the group wanted to do a camel ride, but I’ve ridden camels in a bunch of places before so I wasn’t all that keen. Instead, Laurent and I opted to hire a quad bike to ride up the dunes. I can honestly say that was one of the coolest things I’ve ever done. I donned a helmet and the guide — who had very little English but loved seeing my photos of Canada on my camera — showed me how to operate the accelerator and the brakes, and off we went up the dunes. I probably only got to drive for about 5 or 10 minutes, but it felt like longer, speeding up the dunes.
We did some photo stops at the top and nixed the idea of sandboarding. On the way down, the guide drove, and he took us the long way around and sped at an insane pace on some really steep areas where I had to hold on for dear life.
Quad biking: Definitely way more fun than riding a camel.
Oasis in the desert
Next, we headed over to the desert oasis, called Crescent Lake due to its crescent shape. There’s a pagoda there and you can walk around, but first, we opted to climb the sand dune opposite the lake for the aerial view.
We met up with Howard there, and the three of us set out to climb the biggest dune. As I’d discovered in Morocco and Namibia, what may look like a small climb from the ground is actually much more challenging once you get onto the dunes and your feet start sliding backwards with every step. Luckily, someone had put a rope ladder type stair system up, so climbing was a lot easier than it would have been.
The view from the top was great. Sand for miles and miles and miles. I’m sure it would have been even nicer at sunrise or sunset, since the glare of the midday sun washed out the colours a bit. But I still managed to get some nice photos, I think.
We slid down in record time — down is always easier than up — and took a few minutes trying to empty our shoes from the sand. That’s a futile task, and even though I did two or three more clean-ups afterwards, I still have sand everywhere and I’m sure I’ll be finding it for days. Oh well, price of fun.
After that, we went over to the lake and a pagoda and had a quick walk around for a look. The pagoda was constructed to protect the oasis, which you can understand when you consider how important it must have been to Silk Road travellers.
Onwards
We headed back to the hotel around six, stopped off for a quick dinner in the market, and picked up our bags from hotel reception. Our train to Turpan leaves at midnight, but from a different train station a few hours’ drive out of town in Guazhou.
The road between Dunhuang and Guazhou is unfinished; most of it is under construction as we speak. It was pretty nuts — the driver had to navigate around sand washouts, sand dust to the point of whiteout, and areas where the road simply didn’t exist. We buckled our seatbelts as we bumped and stumbled along this insane road that simply wouldn’t be open to traffic at all back home, but here in China seems to just require some driving skill and nerves of steel.
Now I’m at the train station waiting to board our midnight train to Turpan. Silk road journey: Ever westward.