Zhangye, China

Today we woke up at 6am and left on a train to Zhangye West by 7.30am. We reached 3 hours later and we had trouble storing our luggage at the train station because apparently they don't have a luggage storage room. Luckily there was a convenience store nearby that offered that. How very convenient for us. We then hired a day taxi (friend of the store owner) and he brought us to eat as well as to visit some tourist spots. He charged us ¥500 but it seemed reasonable for 3 people and a long journey to and fro.

Of course, the reason we went to Zhangye was to see the colourful mountains of Zhangye National Geopark but that is almost an hour from town, so we decided to visit the Zhangye Buddhist Temple first. Now, the interesting thing about the temple is that it is home to the largest clay sleeping Buddha statue with a wooden core in Asia. However, taking pictures of it was not allowed so I took pictures of the building and surrounding instead. We spent about an hour there and then we left to see the Danxia colourful hills.

The entrance fee to this park is ¥75. Good thing is that is offers buses to the different platforms, as it was a rather sunny day. These hills are a result of years of geological activity causing it to erode and appear to have a myriad of colours. From what I heard, its even more colourful if it rains the day before, which was not the case for us. But anyway, still a magnificent sight. A fun fact: the 2015 Hollywood film "Great Wall of China" was partly filmed here, amongst some others.

We were supposed to watch the sunset at the last platform which was platform 4, but it was getting more crowded towards 6pm and so we decided to leave in view of the fear of being crushed by chinese tourist.

We boarded our train to Jiayuguan at 10pm from our earlier train station and reached an hour later, having trouble finding our hostel as it was in some shady part of town. Surprisingly though, the inside of Pearl Hostel did not match the outside, and soon I found myself snuggled under the covers of the comfortable bunk bed.Read more