All grotto'ed out

Friday 24 October 2025

Our guide and driver collected us at 0750 today for a Mogao Cave visit.  These UNESCO World Heritage caves are world famous and contain some of the finest examples of Buddhist art spanning a period of 1,000 years.  The first caves were carved out in 366 CE for Buddhist meditation and worship.  Later they became a place of pilgrimage, and caves continued to be built at the site until the 14th century.

These the best known of the Chinese Buddhist grottoes and, along with Longmen Grottoes, which we visited last year, and Yungang Grottoes (I presume on our to-do list?) are one of the three famous ancient Buddhist sculptural sites of China.  JC last visited these in 2012: click on link to read his devotion to tracking down as many Buddhas in Gansu province in a very short space of time. 

We were grateful we had a guide with us as navigating the ticket purchase (which you have to buy in advance, but you can’t do online without a Chinese ID), introductory movies, shuttle bus and finding an English tour, would have been a challenge.

Photography is not allowed in the caves so you’ll have to believe me that we went there.  One of the caves holds one of the largest ancient Buddhas in the world at 35.5 m.  Once again, the caves were looted by explorers and not terribly well refurbished in the early 20th Century. 

JC paid extra for a private tour of two more caves which he was very excited about.  They have some caves which, due to the precious nature of the paintings, can only be visited by a small number of people a day to keep the humidity at the right level.  I wasn't interested enough to part with my money.

The exhibition area had replicas of the caves so this is the best way of sharing part of what we saw, such as this reclining Buddha.

After lunch we visited Dunhuang Museum.  It was full of the history of Dunhuang’s development from its emergence as a key trading point on the Silk Road in the 1st Century CE to present day, although most of the museum was old stuff which JC likes and doesn’t quite tick my box.  I was in a bit of a fugg after this: very tired and another day of feeling as if I’m walking around the British Museum.

JC has always been keen on archeology/Asian history so this was feeding his soul but not quite mine.  It made me feel bad thought as JC really loves it but I got bored, and felt I should try harder to adore old things too.   We walked down by the river and had coffee as per yesterday.  You can see I look a bit jaded here!

JC had another Chinese burger for supper and then it was a prompt night and nine hours sleep.