Sexy Hexi Corridor

From Xi'an we headed down the Hexi Corridor, the narrow passage that was for centuries the only way into China from the West. To the south is the enormous Tibetan plateau and to the north is the Gobi desert stretching to the Mongolian steppe. The narrowness of the passable terrain allowed caravan traffic (and any potential military incursions) to be controlled by small fortifications in a chain towards Jiayuguan, the final outpost of ancient China and the end of the Great Wall.

Our first stop was Zhangye, a warm, laid back city in which Marco Polo chilled out for a year in 1274. We spent a quiet morning wandering the streets, eating onion pancakes and drinking soy milk before heading to the Dafo Temple. The beautifully dilapidated wooden temple, built in 1100, houses a wooden reclining Buddha from the same date - he measures an enormous 35 m in length and is one of the biggest in Asia.

We couldn't take any pictures inside, but it was a seriously lovely (and huge!) old sculpture surrounded by flaking paintings and decaying old wooden figures. To be honest, I think we were revelling in the musty emptiness of the temple after spending quite a lot of time in the hectic cities of Kathmandu, Beijing, Pingyao and Xi'an. We spent some time wandering through the complex, which also included a guildhall with an opera stage and some incredible peony gardens.

That afternoon, we’d arranged with our hostel to visit the nearby Danxia Landform, a geo park featuring layered sandstone mountains that looked like they were formed from melted crayons. Amazingly vivid red, orange, black, white, purple and yellow stripes cut across the rock, sometimes diagonally, sometimes vertically and sometimes horizontally. The sights in the park are linked up by a bus system, so this isn’t a hiker’s paradise, but it is amazing! The mountains are well-known for their minerals and jade, and the man who owned our hostel had an enormous slab of jade on display in the common room that he had found while playing in the geopark when he was young. We had made sure to plan our trip for sunset, but unfortunately we had a fairly overcast day - the colours were still spectacular, so it would be amazing to see them in a bright sunset!

The next day we stocked up on a big tasty breakfast:

Ready to slog through some very uninspiring countryside on the train to get to our next stop.

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The landscape was fitting, underlining the fact that we were coming to Jiayuguan to see one thing - the very last outpost of the Great Wall and the end of the civilised world for the ancient Chinese (though China often controlled lands far west of here, they considered it a place of barbarians). The fortress was known as the mouth of China and the Hexi corridor its throat. Nothing entered the empire from the West without passing through it, faced with the Qílián Shān peaks and the Hēi Shān (Black Mountains) of the Mǎzōng Shān range on either side (themselves peppered with numerous forts and army bases).

The fort was built in 1372 and is more like a small walled city, with accommodation and drill areas within its walls. The walls were considered impregnable and it certainly felt that way, with buttresses, enormous double gates used to trap enemies and destroy them from the ramparts. As we watched a thunderstorm roll in, the whole place felt VERY foreboding.

Here’s us outside the “Gate of Conciliation”, ironically named considering it was the door through which exiles would have left the empire and ridden off into the desert to meet whatever fate awaited them. Hard to imagine a more unwelcoming environment in which to be banished!

Thinking we could probably beat the weather rolling in, we decided to go see the westernmost slices of the Great Wall, which (rather than running in one line like most of the Wall) is multiple branches of wall spreading into the mountain ranges on either side of the fortress to ensure no slippery enemies made their way in. Unlike the rammed earth bricks of the Great Wall we were climbing near Beijing, this was made of packed desert earth snaking up the bare rocks of the Black Mountains.

Unfortunately, we didn’t make it to the top and back before the weather slammed us! We sheltered in the watchtower for a while, but eventually had to venture out into the lightning, thunder, hail and pelting rain with our wee umbrella to get back to the shelter of our waiting Uber!

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The next day we were snaking through the parched, flat desert again on the high speed train, heading to Dunhuang - a spot that has been a literal oasis for tired Silk Road travellers for millennia. At the edge of Dunhuang City is the Singing Sands Dune, where desert meets oasis in storybook fashion, where a series of impossibly smooth, angular yellow sand dunes have the incredible Crescent Moon Oasis tucked between. By all accounts, the movement of the fine sand in the wind should ensure any spring is eaten up and covered by the desert, but the particular shape of the dunes ensures winds moving over the surface shifts sand coming off one dune to the dune on the opposite side, allowing the spring to remain exposed. There is record of an emperor visiting the oasis at around 90AD!

We trudged to the top of the dune (1700m), dodging camels, and stared out at the endless dunes (ignoring the endless tourists in the other direction) for hours.

The next day we headed out to Dunhuang’s other star attraction, the Mogao Caves, one of the most important collections of Buddhist art on the planet. The cave temples were funded and frequented by rich merchants praying for success before leaving for the terrifying western wastelands on their trading journeys. During its most significant period (around 600-1000 AD) it had 18 monasteries and housed more than 1400 monks and nuns as well as hundreds of very busy artists. The area fell into disuse for around 500 years before being “rediscovered” by a series of western explorers, many of whom pried hundreds of panels of art from the walls and one of whom purchased thousands of manuscripts hidden in a secret cave (many of which were of enormous historic value) for around £200.

The site is prefaced by two movies, one on an Imax screen setting out the history of Dunhuang and the caves, and the second on an insane domed observatory-style roof screen, giving an epic immersive virtual tour through the caves, many of which are not open to the public. There are 492 caves on the site, the majority of which are incredibly decorated. Around 20 of them are open to the public, and we were guided through by a very knowledgeable student of ancient art, who explained the significance and detail of the caves we visited. We were also lucky to be there on Buddha’s birthday, the only day of the year guests are allowed to walk a circle around the absolutely ENORMOUS giant Buddha sculpture for good luck.

That evening, we packed a picnic and some bottles of wine, and hiked back up the sand dune to watch the sunset and the stars come out. A fantastic end to an incredible journey through the Hexi Corridor!