Jun 27, 2011 - Jiayuguan

Beteen the Qilian Mountain and the Gobi Desert "Stone Desert", Jiayuguan was the end of the Great Wall before the fort of Duhuang was established, was the last outpost of the great Wall... after was the unknown and the beginning of the unprotected territories, the wilderness... and actually, still since the Xinjiang province is so different from the other chinese provinces, difficult to feel in China after Dunhuang.

Jun 25, 2011 - June 16 Jiayuguan

Back in internet land - it's been a long strethch without it! On 16 June we left Dunhuang for the long drive (around 400km) on very bad roads to our bush camp right next to the western end of the Great Wall. The countryside was very dry and flat, again with many huge wind farms. Al was driving and said later that we were going at 90km/hr and it took us 20 minutes to pass one of the wind farms! We stopped for the night near a town called Jiayuguan and set up camp under the shadow of the wall. It was our cook group's turn to cook dinner and...

Jun 25, 2011 - 18 June Liujiaxia & Bingling Si Buddhist Grottoes

Having breakfast at our bush camp we were visited by a group of locals who wanted to see what we were eating. After chatting for a while (or rather very complicated charades to try and communicate) they went on their way. We packed up camp and hopped back on Asima to finish our journey to Liujiaxia. We again created a stir when we stopped in a small village for lunch and the locals descended on us. We took photos of them and they took photos of us on their mobile phones, all the village kids were brought over for us to admire and they had a...

Aug 14, 2009 - the North West "WALL"

Felt much better and we didn't set out until around 9.30 as one of the group Had needed to extend his Visa and we were waiting for the visa office to open. Long day of driving headed north west to Wuwai for our first Bush Camp. Scenery again so very different from place to place - we started off with industrial and market gardens followed by sandy mountains with so vegetation to speak of and then More market gardens and dry and desolate flat bush lands. Got our first glimpse of the north west 'wall' and just past Wuwei we'd come 430 Ms in...

Jul 2, 2008 - Jiayuguan (We don't know how to pronounce it either)

The train from Xi’an to Jiayuguan was excruciatingly long. Our first task upon boarding the train at 11 in the morning was to figure out what time the train stopped in Jiayuguan. Jiayuguan is a tiny city by Chinese standards (approximately only 150,000 inhabitants) and is not considered a major stop. We knew that the train would only stop briefly before proceeding down the tracks, so we were worried about missing our stop. After unsuccessfully trying to communicate with the train staff, the train staff sent over a Chinese woman who spoke a...

Sep 20, 2007 - Jiayuguan

Its taken 33 hours with very little sleep to get here and I arrived at 4.10 in the morning, but its been worth it. For the last 4 weeks or so I've been getting a little fed up with China; communication can be such a hassle sometimes if you don't speak Mandarin, there's being stared at, and the never ending negotiations for the price of everything. But the local's attitude has made all the difference, and today has restored some of my faith in China. There were still the same old obstacles to overcome with communication, but thankfully the...

Sep 21, 2005 - Jiayuguan

A long (615km) dusty day with 180km of roadworks. However, we did reach half way to Sydney in Km! We were in a stretch of road between the Taklaman and Gobi deserts at the time and celebrated by eating a Sainsbury's fig roll from the pack of emergency en route rations that Rachel had bought for us to take. Yum yum, (better get stock in Carol, could be a run on them when we get home.) We had been recommended a detour onto a good road (no trucks allowed) by our guide. He had given us the mile post number to find it but no other directions. We...