Taklamakan Dunes, Turpan Wells and Trains across the Gobi

An adventure into western China

by Michelle Feneberg

The night train through the Gobi desert was the greatest excitement of our trip. I thought the family would lynch me, for making them sleep in a noisy rocking train. But they were so enthusiastic afterwards that they all want to book another train journey soon.

But the train journey was only in the middle of our adventure to the western realms of China. We started in Dunhuang, climbing the huge sand dunes of the Taklamakan desert at sunset. The children of course couldn’t resist rolling down the dune after a strenuous climb, and related their experience with great excitement as I tried in vain to clean the sand from the nooks and crannies in their ears and pockets. We strolled around the Crescent Lake which miraculously seeps out from beneath the desert providing much sought after relief for weary travelers in times gone by. We drank in the noticeably fresh air that struck us from the moment we emerged from the airplane. We did not take a camel ride, quad bike ride or micro-light flight, but all were available for the enthusiastic explorers.

Our visit to the remnants of the Great Wall was everything we expected it to be. This part of the wall was built during the Han Dynasty, more than 2000 years ago. Originally 3m high by 3 m wide the elements have taken their toll over the centuries leaving a few remnants of a grand structure that stretched for hundreds of kilometers across the arid desert. Watch towers were placed at strategic locations with piles of firewood ready to send smoke signals in the day or fire signals at night. Some of these piles of wood still exist in a solidified rock form where they lay 2000 years ago. We loved visiting this remote wall which provides a stark contrast to the rebuilt Ming walls near Beijing with its crowds of tourists.

Dunhuang is famous for the Mogao Grottoes which house some of the oldest Buddhist paintings in China. The 700 caves span almost two kilometres and were dug and painted over a period of 1000 years until the end of the Yuan Dynasty 1271. Over the centuries the caves were almost forgotten as the overland Silk Route was abandoned for the ocean Silk Route and only local people would visit the caves for worship.

In 1900 the caves were ‘re-discovered’ when a Taoist Monk who had appointed himself as caretaker of the caves discovered a walled-off secret room containing 50 000 manuscripts. This cave is today known as the Library cave and was ‘ransacked’ by a number of foreigners in the early 20th Century as they carried off thousands of manuscripts to their home countries. Some even removed the murals from the walls as well as many sculptures. Two impressive giant statues can be seen in the grottoes, the largest is 35 metres tall.

We were the only foreign tourists to tour that day and had our own guide for the family. The attraction is well organized and each tour guide is given a computer generated list of 7 or 8 caves through which to guide their visitors. This spreads the tourists evenly across the many caves and preserves the caves from being overrun. Specialist visitors in the areas of history, art or Buddhism may request to have certain caves opened for them at an extra fee. We were more than satisfied however with what our guide had shown us. Two movies are shown before the tour that take you into some of the inaccessible caves and provide all the interesting background history to the caves. 

Dunhuang is famous for its donkey meat and noodles. So before taking the two hour drive to catch the night train across the Gobi desert we sampled this specialty at a simple restaurant. We were somewhat underwhelmed – but at least we tried. We were quite a curiosity as the 5 restaurant staff hovered around watching the foreigners eat their meal.

We fell into our ‘soft sleepers’ at 10:30pm on the night train. We had a compartment to ourselves with four bunks and a locking door. The train rocked rhythmically from side to side, but the forward motion was less smooth as the train often jolted when the rear carriages were going slower than the locomotive. Trains passing in the opposite direction would suddenly envelope our train in a whoosh of sound before disappearing in the night air. We all slept soundly until being woken 10 minutes before our stop. We staggered off the train in the dark at 5:30 am and crunching across the gravel of the carpark we met our guide to Turpan.

Turpan is a famous grape growing region right in the middle of the desert. More than 2000 years ago the locals started digging the Karez Well system of underground ducts. Water is channeled from the watershed surface run-off of the Tianshan Mountains to where it is needed. Today there are still 1100 wells and 5000 km of channels in use. All of this is, of course, underground and not possible to see, but there is a small museum dedicated to the Karez Well where it is possible to go underground and see the channels and flowing water. It may be a bit disappointing to some, but when you consider the age of the system, the concept and the work involved it is a truly remarkable project. We were told that this is ranked in the top three destinations for Chinese visitors valued as highly as the Great Wall and the Grand Canal. 

We also visited Grape Valley but were extremely disappointed and found that it was just a tourist trap. If you have ever been to vineyards in other parts of the world you will also be disappointed. The Turpan Grapes are not grown for wine but largely dried into sweet raisins. The grape vine interestingly is not cut back during the winter months, but is removed from the wire structure and the vine is wound around the base of the plant then covered to protect it during the cold winter months. For dinosaur enthusiasts the museum in Turpan has a great display of bones as well as mummies well preserved due to the arid climate.

The 2000 year old ruins of an ancient city called Jiaohe lie just outside Turpan on a plateau where a river forks into two. It was a thriving and important city on the Silk Road and the buildings were carved out of the natural rock. Elevated above the river with sheer cliffs for sides, the city had no need for walls all around. Remnants of residential housing, government buildings, temples, stupas and wells can all be seen. We visited the site early in the morning before the heat and the crowds and the children had great fun running through the empty ancient streets deciding which house they would have liked to have lived in.

After visiting Turpan we took a two hour drive to Urumqi where we spent the night before catching our flight home. Unfortunately there was not enough time to visit the Xinjiang Regional Museum which houses some fascinating Caucasian mummies found in the region, one of which is almost 4000 years old. The mummies with blonde and red hair and wearing Tartan fabric have caused quite a stir amongst anthropologists as they try to determine their origin.

The empty deserts of western China with thousands of windmills generating clean energy provide a stark contrast to the crowded and polluted cities of China. This journey was off the beaten track for most families but will certainly leave a lasting impression on all of us and fill in another piece of the puzzle of this large and diverse country, China.