After our fresh noodle dinner we spent a quiet night in the hotel parking lot. In the morning we met Green in her room and did some email before heading towards our next stop, Xiahe in the Gannan Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture, Gansu Province. It is famous for its Labrang monastery, the largest edifice of the […]
Getting a late start from the end of the Great Wall of China, we were back on the monotonous highway. Looking for a place to camp, we saw a side road and followed it to a field with hundreds of bags of just-harvested onions, but no one around. We guessed that trucks would be coming […]
It was late when we wound our way through the dark streets of Jiayuguan (Gansu Province) to find the official end of The Great Wall of China. A really full moon, the biggest and roundest of the year called Harvest Moon, lit the way as we arrived at an empty parking lot with a sign […]
Leaving the oasis of Turpan, we were back on the seemingly endless and quite boring toll highway along the northern edge of the Taklamakan desert. It felt like driving across Nevada. By late afternoon I was falling asleep. Then we saw it, an actual break in the fences and guardrails into the black rock desert […]
After a short drive from the Gaochang ruins we arrived in the pleasant city of Turpan. Turpan is China’s “Death Valley”. Part of the Turpan basin is 154m, (505 feet), below sea level, making it the second lowest depression on earth, just after the Dead Sea. It is the hottest spot in China. In July […]
OK, so we can almost cross the Taklamakan Desert off our China Bucket List; amazing but thanks to the paved oil exploration road, not so bad. Given that without the road it would have lived up to its reputation, “The Sea of Death”. We had to make a “few” miles every day because we still […]
Three hundred and thirty seven thousand square kilometers, (130,000 sq. mi), The Taklamakan is one of the largest sandy deserts in the world and one of the most dangerous. Nicknamed “The Sea of Death”, one translation in Chinese is, “If you go in, you won’t come out.” Flanked by the high Tien Shan Mountains to […]
A little sad that we had missed the knife factories in Yengisar, but it wasn’t really on our major must-see list. We were following the southern edge of the infamous Taklamakan Desert. In at least one of the Chinese languages, Taklamakan means, “If you go in, you won’t come out”. Hummm? After spending an hour […]
Back in the days of the Silk Road, Kashgar was one of the most important trading stops along this historic Route. Having survived the treacherous crossing of the Taklamakan Desert east of Kashgar, many merchants probably stopped here for weeks to bargain and exchange goods before returning home. In essence, it was a giant marketplace […]
China! We had started our process to drive across all of China months before. Working with Lisa Li at NAVO Tour in Chengdu, we explained to her what our overall plan was; to drive from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean, across all of Eurasia, following the Silk Road. To drive our own vehicle […]
