A Must Go Place Before You Die - The Silk Road and Gobi Desert

The Silk Road ( -丝绸之路) or the legendary Journey To the West story based on real life monk – Master Xuan Zang’s pilgrimage to India to fetch some Buddhist Scriptures accompanied by his 3 diciples – Monkey God, Pigsy and a Sand Demon has always fascinated since young.

The Silk Road is one of the oldest trade routes linking across the West (including Europe and the Mediterranean) and East Asia, that was expanded in 200 B.C during the Han Dynasty.

I started my journey from Xian (西安), the former Capital of Han Dynasty and visited the ancient City Wall, The Big Wild Goose pagoda built in 652 AD during Tang Dynasty and the great Terracotta Army of Emperor Qin Shi Huang the First Emperor of China (about 220 BC).

Leaving the Armies behind, I boarded a domestic flight to Lanzhou for 2 nights. Then I continue my journey to a small town of Jiu Quan and board an over night train to explore the next town, Jia Yu Guan (嘉峪关), an ancient fort.
This location marks the end of Western Great Wall. The fort was built during the Ming Dynasty in 1372 and the outer wall is connected to the Great Wall.

The fortress walls were very thick, made mostly of mud and straw, and amazingly are still standing strong, until this day though the extreme desert weather. This was partly due to the tight quality control check while building the walls.
Tough and strong men were hired to shoot arrows on the walls to ensure there were no holes and arrows were not able to penetrate through.

This fort was build to prevent the invasion of nomadic tribes from Central Asia and also a place to collect taxes from the traders.

The next stop was Dun Huang (炖煌), a very important trading and cultural center along the Silk Road about 1300 years ago just like the present Capital city of Beijing.

I managed to experience a camel ride through Mingsha Hill Desert where the sand consists of five colours.. This ancient desert pass were built during Han Dynasty as the only passage of the Silk road from China to the West and also served as military strong point.

Dun Huang

One of the highlights of Dun Huang is to visit the Magao Grottoes (莫高窟), also known as the Thousand Buddha Caves, which were built on the eastern cliff of Mingsha Hill.
The Grottoes is a well preserved treasure-house of Buddhist art, consisting of 735 caves and approximately 3,000 painted statues. Unfortunately, no photos are allowed inside the cave. The caves contain some of the finest crafting of the Buddhist art, Western horoscope signs and paintings on the wall.

The journey continued, passing along a stretch of Gobi Desert to next destination, Turpan, famous for producing the sweetest grapes and raisins in China.
September and beginning of October are the harvest season of grapes and I managed to taste about 10 kinds of grapes all being different sizes and colours !
Here, I visited the Su Gong pagoda, Xinjiang largest Islamic ancient pagoda that is also a mosque. This town looks more like a Middle Eastern than Chinese.

I rode took a donkey ride to the ancient city of Gao Chang. First visiting a ruins of a temple claiming that Master Xuan Zang had lectured here in 628AD, on his way to India to obtain Buddhist scriptures.
This entire city was burnt down in the 14th century during a war.

Last visit in Turpan (吐鲁番) is the famous Flaming Mountain, known to be the hottest spot in China. This past October, the temperature was measured 49.6 C by one of the largest thermometers in China !
This place reminded me of legendary story of Monkey God when he stole the magic fan from Iron Fan Princess to put out the flames in 49 strokes.

Urumuqi

Finally my journey ended in Urumuqi. The last stop with the most surprising scenic views of Heaven Lake. Located about 110 km out of the city. Heaven Lake is surrounded by pine and cypress trees and fields of wild flowers. It's hard to imagine, this majestic scene is in central China. The temperature was –2C and the lake was beginning freeze over.

Shopping at the Bazaar in Urumuqi is like going to the Middle East. Arabic writing is on every sign, and in the bazaar, vendors are selling hand-woven carpets, nuts, mirrors, animal fur, teapots and belly dancing costumes.

On my last night in Urumuqi, I attended a dinner show featuring Xinjiang Folk dance. The highlight of the evening was the Belly dance performance by the Kazakhs' and Uyrgur beautiful women.

My final flight home, while looking down on the vast Taklamakan desert, I saw this amazing landscape and felt a much deeper appreciation of the Silk Road traders' accomplishments …

If you would like to share your travel experience just like me, simply sign-up and join me to become a travel bug : http://hubpages.com/_travelbug