Saturday 25 October 2025
Today was a long, full day consisting of more old things and ending up in a geo park for sunset. Dunhuang sits at the western edge of the Hexi corridor. This was an important historical narrow route flanked between the Mongolian plateau to the north and the Tibetan one to the south - so a key trade route. Image Lang et al (2023)
We initially headed south east out of Dunhuang - more grottos! These were the Western Thousand Buddha grottos. These aren't a big complex and only four caves were open to us so the whole thing took under an hour.
Next stop was the Yumenguan, Yumen Pass, complex. The Yumen Pass was established in the western end of the Hexi Corridor from the 2nd Century BCE to the 3rd Century CE. It controlled the passage of traders/nomads moving between Western China and the land further west.
When JC visited this in 2012, he hired a taxi that drove him into the desert up to the small fort. Now it’s a tourist attraction with shuttle buses ferrying you around the Yumen area. To be fair, development of these sites does add an element of control/preservation, preventing tourists from wandering over/on these ancient sites but it does seem a bit constricted.
We walked to the Small Fangpan Castle, constructed in the third year of Emperor Wu of Han’s, 108 BCE. It was empty inside and was once used as a defence command not as living quarters.
Next was the remains of the Danggu Beacon tower sat on the Han Dynasty Great Wall (it's the stone lump in the left hand image below). This wall was part of the military defence system in the Hexi Corridor with this section stretching for 198 km. At its time, the wall was 3 m high and 3 m wide at its base, but it was never intended to be walked along as some defensive walls are.
We shuttle-bused to the Big Fangpan Castle which held supplies such as grain for the military as nothing grew out here (still doesn't). It was 132 m long and we had time to circle it before the bus moved us on. Spot the photographer at large.
We drove another hour west to visit the Yardang Scenic area. Yardang is a land form created by erosion of relatively soft sedimentary rock. Yardang land forms appear around the world, eg Spain, Namibia etc. Once again we were shuttled from spot to spot. This was the only police station we were actively encouraged to photograph. Like a police grotto.
Annoyingly, we weren’t allowed very close to anything. It’s not as if we were going to carve our names in the rock, but the amazing geological features were difficult to enjoy from so far away. They were also quite spaced out so hard to capture the totality of them from a pedestrian viewpoint - a drone would have been perfect.
This is the peacock rock.
And this is called the fleet, from the air you can see rows and rows of rock forms looking like a fleet sailing on the sea.
Our luck turned at the last drop off where we were left to our own devices. Of course we still had to stick to the path (not that many Chinese did mind you) but we were able to get closer to the rocks.
We stayed until the sun went down enjoying the golden hour.
It was a two hour drive back to Dunhuang. I can't remember if we ate this evening or just got back late, had some nuts/bananas, packed and grabbed some sleep.
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