Dune Posing

Just two stops around Dunhuang today. We started at the Mogao caves. Carved into cliffs at the edge of the desert, abandoned to the sand and elements for centuries after the ‘Chinese’ capital moved East before an accidental rediscovery in the 1900’s, the caves (temples, cells, sanctuaries and one library) are hugely impressive even to a philistine like me. There are 492 of them but happily we only visited 8 on our guided tour plus one for luck afterwards. I was pleased we booked an English speaking tour: us, a group of Japanese and a few from Indonesia and a lad from Singapore made for a motley crew! Interesting as anything but we were hot and tired after a couple of hours so abandoned thoughts of a museum visit and caught a taxi back to town and our worst meal of the trip so far!
Outing two was a short walk to the Mingsha Mountain Scenic Area, aka Disney on sand! They must have the largest concentration of camels in the country, all for tourists’ nose-to-tail camel rides up a dune and back. The best part though is that the place stays open till the early hours, plenty opportunity to get your picture taken in hired, historical garb as the sun sets.