Continuing on the Silk Road – Dunhuang, Jiayuguan, and Xian

Without meaning to, our next few destinations are all related to the Silk Road. Dunhuang is another important city on the Silk Road, but it is most famous for the Mogao Grottoes, caves that contain elaborate Buddhist paintings and sculptures. It's a lot grander and more important historically than the Yungang Grottoes we saw in Datong because it has over 700 caves and contain artwork created over a millennium starting at 366AD.

To protect the artwork, the only way to see the caves is with a guide and the tour only includes 10 caves. The experience is slightly diminished since we couldn't wander through the caves at our leisure, but what we got to see were impressive enough. One of the more famous caves contains the world's 3rd largest Buddha figure, standing at over 34.5 meters high. Photos were not allowed inside so here I am outside of the cave. To give you an idea for the scale, the Buddha is the same height as the building behind me:

Another famous cave is the library cave because it originally contained over 50,000 rare and original manuscripts dating as far back as 400AD. Interesting story: the manuscripts were discovered centuries after the Mogao caves fell into ruins and were almost covered up by the Gobi sand. Thinking he's doing a good thing, the guy who found the cave sold the manuscripts to raise money to restore the cave and build a 3-story exterior outside of the cave. Unfortunately for the Chinese, he sold the priceless manuscripts to foreigners for very little money so only about 8000 of the inferior manuscripts remain in China, and the rest are in various museums around the world.

After a night's rest to recoup from the bus ride and the long day, we moved on to our next stop on the Silk Road, JiaYuGuan. Dunhuang to JiaYuGuan is only(!) a 5-hour bus ride.... not too painful. JiaYuGuan is where the Great Wall ends. Having climbed the Great Wall in Beijing, it's pretty cool to climb the western end of it, some 2200 KM (1367 miles) away.

Also, the fort at JiaYuGuan historically symbolizes the end of “civilized” China and the beginning of “barbaric” land. Exiled officials, scholars, etc., all leave through the West Gate into unprotected land. It was at the end of the day so the West Gate was already closed, but looking out through the crack it does look pretty barren and desolate.

Our last top on the Silk Road tour is Xian. As the ancient capital of China, it marked the end (or beginning) of the Silk Road.

Today, the main reason people come to Xian is to see the Terra Cotta Warriors. China's first emperor, Emperor Qin, built this army of 8000 life size terracotta warriors around 200BC as part of his mausoleum so that he has an army to protect him and to keep him in control in his afterlife. The most impressive part, I think, is that each face is unique. I always thought it's because they were real soldiers, but in reality (and the less gruesome truth) the workers based their models on real soldiers they saw around them.

In general the food in these places were just ok. Being part of the west, the "specialty" dishes were Islamic food like mutton kebobs. However, they all paled in comparison to what we had in Kashgar. I was told that we should have the dumpling feast while in Xian, but Ashok was not feeling well after our meal in Jiayuguan the day before so unfortunately we had to skip it.

Stopping only 1-2 days in each place is pretty tiring so we're looking forward to resting in the next city or two... or we may have to wait until we get to Thailand.