Silk Road - 16th September (Saturday)

We checked out in the morning after breakfast. They only served Chinese breakfast so Ross gave it a miss.


Our first stop on the bus was taking a look at the red dates that Helen is telling us about. It turned out to be something like tiny red longish apples with the apple core, but just a seed. They were in season and there were sacks of red dates as well as dates trees all around. The locals welcomed us to pluck them directly from the trees since they had such a good harvest. It was less juicy than apples but still nice and sweet.

We also had a bush stop where guys went on the left and ladies went on the right for "toilet" stops behind bushes.

Along the bus ride, we saw beautiful scenery of far away mountains. The next stop we had was at China Petroleum petrol station. It was a toilet stop and some of us bought fresh juicy pears from the man on the bicycle. It was only another 30 minutes from the hotel.

JiaYuGuan is an ancient Han Chinese Outpost on the Hexi Corridor. The Great Wall once extended beyond here, but in 1372 during the first few years in Ming dynasty, a fortress was built. From then on, JiaYuGuan was considered both western tip of the Great Wall and the western boundary of the empire. JiaYuGuan was also known as the end of the Great Wall.

We were staying in JiaYuYuan Hotel, a nice four star hotel. We were also told that Jisco owned just about everything in JiaYuGuan, they owned a steel mill factory and two thirds of the population works for the factory. They own just about everything else in town too, including the tour bus and local tour agent Explore engaged on this trip and the hotel we were going to stay in. After a rest and western lunch in the hotel, we headed for WeiJin Tombs (XinCheng Weijin Mu) on the bus. The short bus journey was nice and scenic with willow trees planted on the sides of the road.

The Weijin tombs were quite amazing and we went inside the tombs in two groups due to the limited space. We saw vivid paintings in the tombs. The tombs were below ground with a mound on top. Ross thought it was strange that they were discovered less than 100 years ago when they are marked by large moulds on flat open desert plains.

After that we headed back to the hotel and rested. Lucy organised dinner for some of the people in the group since some had a disaster ordering by themselves.

We had dinner and an early rest. The bed was quite hard and the duvet cover quite small. We took a while to get to sleep.