Thursday, June 18th - Dunhuang to Turpan

This morning we had rain but it didn't last very long and wasn't very hard.  We never really got wet at any time, but did have to watch our step at times.  The rain certainly  refreshed everything and that was nice.  We had breakfast and checked out early and went on our first adventure of the day.

The Mogao Grottoes are a UNESCO World Heritage Site and they are quite amazing.  They are caves in the side of the mountain and they were built over a timespan of 10 dynasties.  There are 750 caves of varying sizes and they all have contain different items.  In the early 1900's after their discovery, a lot of the caves were looted - sometimes by archeologists taking the items back to museums around the world and sometimes by common thieves.  As a result, a lot of the original material is no longer at the site.  Also, some of the caves collapsed or deteriorated over the years and are no longer passable.

We went into 6 to 8 caves.  We couldn't take pictures so I'm not going to remember all of them now (several days later as I write this).  The largest cave contains the beautiful Great Buddha and that sitting statue is over seven storeys high and very impressive in shiny gold.  Another cave held a sleeping Buddha, which was also very beautiful and, while certainly not as high, it was definitely longer.  There are thousands of tourists around in various groups with their tour guide shouting instructions so it got a bit crowded and hectic in the individual caves.  Outside there was a large walkway and a huge museum and park area so much more room to separate the groups for pictures and explanations.

Some of the smaller caves contained different buddhas.  All of the caves were very ornately decorated.  Some of the colours were fading and oxidizing but you could still see most of the colours.  Some of the statues and murals had been at least partially restore in the late 20th century but with the original colour.  In some of the caves you could still see how vibrant the blues and reds and yellows were on the ceilings even while the statues and walls were lighter.  The smaller pictures were sometimes of other buddhas or important religious people, or of the benefactors who helped build the cave originally.  Sometimes the pictures told stories, which once explained to us, were easy to see.  Of course if you were Buddhist, they probably made more sense than they did to us.

The tall Buddha was seven stories high and the main pagoda reconstructed at the front of the cave was five stories high.  The head of the Buddha was always two stories above the original facade, and it was the large head that was originally discovered, not the caves themselves.  The caves are two and three storeys in places. and there are wooden walkways around them.  Pictures in the museum showed what the caves looked like in 1908 (I think).  The walkways and stairs are a bit more substantial now, which is good considering how many tourists are traipsing around these days.  The museum or exhibition centre is very good and shows original and current pictures along with explanations, details on archeologists who worked in the grottoes, the restoration process, and of course the history of the Grottoes.

After the Grottoes we got dropped downtown and some of us went and got a pizza, which took an interesting period of sign language to order, and went down to the river walk to eat it in the shade of the gazebo.  We then walked further down the river and crossed on some rectangular stepping stones across the top of a small dam.  I made it okay but personally did not think I was going to make it so it was not exactly a fun experience - especially when we met someone along the way.  I was having trouble enough on my own without having to share my stepping stone with someone else.  The area was very nice and there were even smaller stepping stones going out to pagodas in the middle of the river.  I didn't try those but it did make for a nice little area.

Once back at our hotel we freshened up and repacked our suitcases/backpacks to prepare for the next part of our journey.  We had a 10:30 overnight train to catch but we had to catch the train in a small town about 3 hours from where we were.   The bus ride was good and we managed to reach the train station with lots of time to spare.  I would describe the countryside along the way as level to rolling hills.  There was some barren land but also some fertile fields.  The fields are small and the crops were varied. 

At the bus station we experienced the worst toilets of our trip so far.  The ladies' toilet was a dark room with two rows of cubicles - one on either side.  Down the middle of each row there was simply a trench sloping slightly to the one end.  We very quickly learned to go to the cubicle at the far end on the right.  That way you were at the start of the trench so "nothing" was floating past under you, and because there was a slight crack in the window so you got a bit of a breeze. 

Eventually we left to get on our train, laughing that it was going to be nice just walking straight out on to the ramp instead of fighting with stairs.  Well, boy were we wrong.  There were three flights up and three flights down just to get over track one to get to track two, which we were leaving for.  And everyone was trying to do it all at once because they wouldn't let you out early, but you had to get on the train on time.  And of course our car was way down at the end so it was quite a hike with all our bags.  Eventually we found our bunks and settled in for the night.  We were on our way to Turpan and all was well.