"Dinosaurs Along The Silk Road" -- Sinofossa 2009 15: Dunhuang & The Mogao Grottoes

After Yumen, we drove another four or so hours to Dunhuang, near the western end of Gansu. Dunhuang is a big tourist town within China because it's adjacent to the Mogao Grottoes, a historically famous site where a cliff side is riddled with artificial caves carved out over the last several centuries. Depending on how much money went into each cave, they contain Buddha statues of various sizes and/or elaborate art. Hailu got us an absolutely fabulous tour guide who took us into several of the grottoes, all of which were amazing and beautiful. I was very pleasantly surprised by the site (given that I'm not much into archeological stuff) and it was, frankly, a highlight of the trip for me. I'd go back in a heartbeat! The single downside about the place was that they didn't allow cameras inside, so I have no pictures from inside any of the grottoes! I understand this -- light degrades the paint and colors in the grottoes, so I empathize -- but the lack of photographic souvenirs is kind of sad...

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Dunhuang sits at the edge of the Taklamakan Desert. The city has long been an oasis on the Silk Road; old Roman trade routes went through here. The desert on the edge of town is dominated by the tallest sand dunes I've ever seen -- I believe that some may be over 300 ft. high. (I'm not certain if these are part of, or only next to, the Mingsha (Sighing) Sand Dunes). I only got a hazy glimpse of them in the distance last time I came through Dunhuang in 2005, and we had plans this year to actually drive out into them. But because it was very windy in the morning, we decided to push that off 'til after the Mogao Grottoes. The wind got even worse in the afternoon, as you'll see in the photos below, so this shot I got out of our bus window while turning was the only good shot I could get of the dunes...

Dunhuang Taklamakan Desert dunes