Dunhuang

Early arrival into Dunhuang on the sleeper train from Zhangye. Top bunk on the hard sleeper, so we slightly drew the short straw there but it was quiet and we slept surprisingly well. The perils of not buying your tickets on the day they're released.

We're getting pretty far west and edging between the Tibetan Plateau and the Gobi desert, so big sandy landscapes and more Islamic influences everywhere - seen in the architecture, food and a lot of the restaurants are Muslim, though also they have obviously also capitalised on this as a novelty in the fake tourist "bazaar" at the centre of Dunhuang's astonishingly chaotic night market.

Our first day was one of those total fail travel days. We had booked to stay in a tent on the edge of the dunes to see the stars, and in the afternoon went to where the map said the address was. Found absolutely nothing, and a local took pity on us and phoned the number they'd given us. Apparently they had decided to cancel all their bookings because a storm was forecast. It started pouring with rain, so we huddled under an umbrella desperately trying to book somewhere else to sleep. Took the last available hotel room in Dunhuang that wouldn't have meant dipping into the emergency disaster travel funds.

Anyway, next day we moved to a very nice hostel with a roof terrace in the night market run by a couple with an eclectic taste in books and jazz, which was good other than the man with the boombox opposite who played the same call and response song for 3 days on repeat.

Dunhuang is the smallest place we've stayed in China - a mere 150,000. So pretty much all walkable, which made a nice change. Unfortunately because it's such a big tourist destination you have to elbow your way through crowds to get anywhere (again, just don't visit China in the summer holidays). We had a hit and miss experience with food, but our favourite thing here has been the liangpi, which is cold noodles made from wheat gluten with chili, and the bao that we've eaten for the last few weeks has been replaced by flatbreads and a phenomenal kind of chili bread pancake.

Dunhuang is partly now a tourist hellhole because it was one of the main stopping points on the Silk Roads and marked the western edge of the great wall of China, so was an important trading post for a long time. Aside from that it's also home to the Mogao Caves, which were built in the 4th century by a Buddhist monk who had an immense spiritual experience and built the caves as shrines. They also contained a treasure trove of incredibly important texts, like the first ever manual to the Chinese board game Go and some of the Buddhist sutras, but the person who discovered them sold them to the British and now they're all in... the British Library. 🤦‍♀️

It was still quite spectacular, although not quite the transcendental spiritual experience that they were originally intended to be.

Finally managed to get out to see the stars on the last night, so our first night fail was made up for in the end 🏜Baca lagi