How to Travel to the Silk Road Hexi Corridor
eageSilk Road Tour is one of the best and popular travel routes in China even in the whole world. As a travel consultant, my colleague and I visited the Hexi Corridor of the Silk Road in 2020. Our travel agency survived in the pandemic thanks for the support of our clients. I revisited Hexi Corridor in the low season of tourism last December.
We took the overnight train from Urumqi to Zhangye for 12 hours , and arrived in Zhangye on the early morning of 31st Dec. Checking in the nice hotel, we drove to Mati Temple which is 65 kilometers away from the city of Zhangye.
Mati Temple is named after the legend that the Heavenly Horse left his footprints on the cliff. When I saw those vivid footprints on the red cliff, my mind immediately produced an image of the galloping horse.
Actually, I felt it wasn't easy to climb up along the stiff stairs, I could imagine those who build the temple must be devout craftsmen.
Climbing through the cave No 33, I saw Buddha Statues who look very feminine. The most remarkable feature of them is their red lips. I assumed because of too much to suffer, Buddhists expressed the demands for peace and happiness by doing good and being kind as women do.
In the afternoon, we went for hiking at Pingshan Lake Grand Canyon. The Canyon is cassock red and huge. So it is better to go up to watch the flat lands. I enjoyed very much overlooking the vast canyon with cassock red.
My colleague and I decided to hike from the bottom. It turned out to be adventurous for climbing the vertical steel bridge. While climbing, I thought aloud "stay calm, stay calm" because I was really scared. Afterwards, I found the hiking was the most fun things I've ever done.
On 1st Jan 2021, we went to see Zhangye Danxia National Geopark, known for rainbow landform. It was my second time of visiting the geopark. Last time was in summer. The park was full of tourists. Hot spots are always crowded in peak seasons. From my perspective, the beauty of Zhangye Danxia still lies in warm colors interlacing, which perfectly improves the visual comfort in space. With the ups and downs of the canyon, tourists can shuttle through the canyon for hours, only feeling energetic.
At noon, we ate Zhangye special pasta fish roe (a kind of noodle in fish shape) for lunch. I found it was delicious.
The next spot was Binggou Danxia Landform, visiting it for its stone forest in various shapes, thus give me more bold reverie. Some are like castles. Some are like wild animals. They are all vivid.
We left Zhangye for Jiayuguan by bullet train at night. It took only 2 hours to get there. On 2nd Jan, we planned to explore Jiayuguan Pass. In front of the gate of "the First Pass", we ran into the head of Jiayuguan Pass. He was wearing ancient soldiers' armor, which was very eye-catching. Jiayuguan actually is an ancient military tower to defend Hun's invasion. Chairman Mao wrote a poem to express his ambition when he visited the Pass. It goes "Idle boast the strong pass is a wall of iron. With firm strides we are crossing its summit".
Although Wei jin Tombs is 25 kilometers away from the Jiayuguan Pass, we got to explore the tombs for red ochre painted patterns on the wall bricks of tombs, which vividly depicted the scenes of people's farming, hunting, music in Wei and Jin Dynasties, which is of great archaeological value. When I saw these paintings, I felt that people's life at that time must be very interesting. The trip ended with us taking a bullet train to Dunhuang. I couldn't help but getting excited touring Mogao Grottoes.
With an early up, we were happy for the short distance of half hour driving from our cozy hotel to Mogao Grottoes. Alough it was a little cold, Mogao Grottoes still attracted more tourists as I saw.
I would like to say Mogao Digital Cinema pretty cool for showing us history and stories of Mogao Grottoes by the 3-dimensional film. I strongly recommend it, and the films were included in the tickets we bought. Taken by the stand - attendant, we visited caves by caves. Among them, I was impressed by the wall paintings of Zhang Qian's mission to the West Rigons and flying murals.
The stand-attendant told us the flying murals present us a peaceful Buddhist kingdom through female body softness with gorgeous clothes like goddess in Greek mythology.
Similarly, Zhang Qian's mission to the West Regions was not peaceful no matter how gorgeous they looked in the paintings. Emperor Han Wudi was ambitious of conquering the West Regions exactly the same as the Emperors of Rome wanted to conquer the East. Whether it was religious introduction or the trade between the East and the West, it was always accompanied by bloodshed and killing.
The trip of Mogao Grottoes would be a pleasant memeory in my life. Then to visit Yangguan Pass by car for 1.5 hours driving, 90 kilometers away from Mogao Grottoes. Yangguan Pass is reproduced as an ancient battlefield. Seeing colorful war flags flying and watchtowers, I had the idea that the frontier soldiers who defended here must miss home very much. Out of Yangguan Pass was the West Regions (Today's Xinjiang), far-reaching and desolated. At night, we had very famous Lanzhou Beef Noold for dinner at Shazhou Night Market.
On 4th Jan, still in good mood, we were up early for visiting Echoing Sand Mountain and Crescent Lake. It is a natural miracle Crescent Lake whcih were never buried by surrounded sand for thousands of years.
We were back home by train transferred at Liuyuan Station on 5th Jan. I've got myself more knowledge about Hexi Corridor by the expenditure, and hoping more and more tourists will be interested in Silk Road Tour to explore the treasure by their own eyes.
