The last entry finished "Our campsite that night was a wild camp - but more of that next time..............." As now is the "next time" then I can tell you about the wild camping. I suppose it is a bit of a cheat to say that it was wild because we camped on a farm. The diary reads "Then more travelling to a campsite - A goat farm in the shadow of the Tien Shan - Had a real live karez in the process of being built. Apparently he had wolves living nearby to to a few weeks ago - then they decamped into mountains." I must say that I was rather disappointed because I would have loved to have camped with wolves. All though I did not write about it in the diary I was very surprised that with all those goats that the farmer even accepted the idea of wolves in the vicinity let alone not going after them with a shot gun. It was interesting to see the karez being built - though I must admit it just looked like an rather large ditch being dug.
"31st Long day in truck - spent most of it asleep . said goodbye to Tien Shan as we move south out of Uyghuristan or the Autonomous Uyghur Region - Have put Central Asioan/Turkish phrase books to one side. Very pleasant meal with G on arrival in Dunhuang." The gastronomic delicacy of Dunhuang is "donkey dumplings" which I hasten to add I did not eat. Having had the ear scratching experience with the very willing donkey who trotted all over the Goachang site I could not, under any circumstances or for anything have faced a "donkey dumpling" it would have been like eating a friend!
From Dunhuang we went to the Mogao Caves - "100s of Buddhist Caves cut into a rockface from abt. 100BCE onwards. Filled with pictures of Buddha - statues of Dudddhas inc. Meitraya - Indian influence - Tibetan influence - Chenies influence - statues of Bodisatvas - 3 caves had huge statues - A teaching Buddha - a Buddha @ moment of Nirvana & a seated Buddha - The teaching Buddha was the 3rd biggest after Bamiyan - Also saw the Library Cave from which Aurel Stein purloined all the Mss - The paintings were incredible - so detailed & such beautiful imagery. Was on my feet for 3+ hours before I realised it. Our guide was very good." The statues all had a layer of sand/dust in the folds which in some lights looked like a photographic negative. I asked our guide about conservation as the dust would damage the statues. She explained that it is not possible to clean them as the paint is so old and fragile that cleaning would damage them too much. So the balance between leaving the statues as they are and risk the sand/dust eroding the paintwork or conserving and damaging the statues when removing the sand. Some of the statues has the most beautiful paintings on them and the incredible woden fronting of the tallest Buddha statue is so intricate. In some of the caves the wall paintings were so bright that it is difficult to think that they were done 100s of years ago.
After the Mogao Caves we returned to Dunhuang and I note in my diary for 1st June "Had a lovely lucnch with M, T, Y & J. Went to one of the little eateries over the road [from the hotel] and used the food list to great success- pork/chicken noddles & other things too." The "food list" refers to a handout we were all given with a whole range of food and drink written in English/Pinyin & Chinese. These lists were invaluable and allowed me to have many wonderful meals - quite easy to use - the procedure as follows:
- decide what to eat.
- Show choice to the waiteress/waiter.
- They say "yes" they have it or "no" not on the menu.
- The waiter/waitress then shows me an alternative.
- I say "yes!".
After Dunhuang - going ever eastwards we had our first glimpse of that icon of China - The Great Wall.
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