Turpan to Dunhuang - raisin to apricot country

Thursday 23 October 2025

We said farewell to Turpan today and caught a Didi (Chinese equivalent to Uber) to the station to catch the 09:15 to Liuyung.  By now we were in the swing of the system in the stations, so presented ourselves to the police and had already split our mossie spray between the luggage - in Xinjiang aerosols were limited to 150 ml per person on a train. 

We were on a fast train today so after 3.5 hours of pretty barren desert landscape we emerged at Liuyang South. Our Didi driver was waiting and 128 km, two hours later, we were in Dunhuang. 

It was a treat to arrive mid afternoon as it gave us time to orientate ourselves and, dare I say, chill before our next tour.  Our accommodation was perfect, roomy with a cute tea area.

I noted all the instructions in our block's lift.

Close by was the River Dang with a lovely riverside walk which, to my delight, had stepping stones zigzagging across the river.  Of course, I had to do these.  The river was only about 0.5 m deep (give or take depth of silt) but we still took it steadily.

We headed for the night food market but it wasn’t running yet.  So we found a touristy, but nice, coffee shop where we had americano (for me) and latte (for him) plus a delightful bowl of freeze dried fruit/veg and a platter of watermelon.  Proper Ruth snacks.  We also played cards for the first time this holiday, which indicated just how little ‘chill’ time we’d had so far.

The night market got buzzing after about 1900.  As we are moving east we are seeing more signs in English.

JC tucked into a ‘Chinese hamburger’ which was a puff pastry round, filled with chopped mutton/peppers.  He followed this with donkey yellow noodles.  

I meanwhile stuck to a bowl of rice (plov-like).  Apricots are abundant in this region so we tested the apricot tea.  It was a bit too sweet for my liking but definitely refreshing.

We stocked up on provisions on the way back to our accommodation - sometimes I feel like our holidays are one big supermarket hunt - and had an early night due to having to be up and out by 07:45 tomorrow.  No rest for the weary.