September 9 - 11, Days 19-21 Lhasa to Xining to Jaiyuguan

 Our last morning in Lhasa we packed our bags - with our clean clothes! and had a last high-altitude breakfast before heading for the station. We were returning to Xining before heading further north and west. Our trip was as delightful as it had been a few days ago. And just as long!  We arrived in Xining 22 hours later rather exhausted after a long night on hard bench-beds BUT we had been to the roof of the wall!  A dream come true.

Sadly leaving Lhasa

Fascinating hills 

Much cropping outside Lhasa

Yak herds and the herders camps

Stunning skies and landscapes

Back in Xining, we visited a rather spectacular mosque – the Dongguan Mosque, the largest mosque in the province of Qinghai. It was immense and opened in the rear to what looked like a market. It had a feeling of deep tranquillity and there were few tourists which added to the sense that this was a place of prayer and worship rather than a tourist destination, something that we had felt at many of the temples and monasteries we had visited up to this stage. We walked past a school on the way to and from the mosque and peeked through the fence at the children engaged in some form of sport. They were having a huge amount of fun. Then it was time for lunch, another banquet! before heading once again to the station to catch our train for a relatively short 3-hour ride to Jiayuguan - we were heading for the western frontier of the Great Wall of China.  As Lindsay has noted, everything is timed to the second on most trains in China and this was no different. We were well on our way before our luggage was even stowed. This precision has meant a few mad dashes to board trains after hold ups going through security which is as rigorous, or more, than airport security.

The entrance to the Dongguan Mosque

The tranquil mosque was within the walls 

Lines of ancient bonsai trees

Prayer carpets were piled in many locations withn the grounds of the mosque

But we made the train and arrived in Jiayuguan from Xining later that afternoon and were quite surprised to find a fairly ‘new’ city. Situated on the edge of the Gobi Desert, it was built around the 1950s when iron, zinc, lead and coal were discovered in the vicinity. The city looks rather incongruous beside the ancient Great Wall.  Jiayuguan is in the Gansu Province and is famous as the westernmost terminus of the Ming Dynasty Great Wall. Nicknamed "The First and Mightiest Pass Under Heaven," the 600-odd year old Jiayuguan Fortress once served as a vital, heavily fortified checkpoint along the ancient Silk Road protecting China at the narrowest point of the western (or Hexi) corridor between the Tibetan Plateau and towering Qilian Mountains to the south and the unyielding deserts of the Mongolian Plateau to the north.  The Hexi Corridor (meaning west of the river, the Yellow River) sometimes known as the ‘throat way’, linked China to the West so security and protection was vital for economic security.

The centre piece was a mini farm with cows and cartons of milk 

The next day, after a groaningly large all-you-can-eat breakfast, we headed off to the Wall - along with bundreds of others (mainly Chinese). The fortifications were most impressive but having visited the Mutianyu Wall from Beijing some years earlier, it was a little disappointing. It was a totally different kind of structure set in very different terrain, but the defence equipment and strategic defence structures of the fortress were very impressive.  Something that caught my eye was the "loose brick" on the watchtower wall over the Hui Ji Men gate. According to local Ming Dynasty legend, an architect named Yi Kaizhan calculated he would need exactly 99,999 bricks to build the fortress. When construction finished, one brick was left over. The architect intentionally left the extra brick unmortared and placed it on a ledge above the Hui Ji Men gate. He convinced his supervisors it was a divine, stabilizing brick, and that moving it would cause the entire fortress to collapse. To this day, the loose brick remains in place. Quirky tales like this fascinate me. 

Entrsane to the Fortress much of which has been 'restored'

Within the fortress walls were many traps for invaders 

The crumbling wall can be seen here snaking out intot the inhospitable desert

At each corner of the fortress walls were sentry towers

Our group in front of two-story Wenchang Hall, a wooden pavilion located inside the inner city of the fortress

A devious machine that was rolled down the horse track into the fortress if invaded

Ah thre 'loose brick' - the 99,999th brick 

The Chinese are the masters of 'cute'. These 'carmel' vehicles ferried people around

After wandering hither and yon exploring the Fortress and gazing out across the desert at the Wall, which looked rather worn down, our group eventually regathered to walk down the hill to the quite newly-built Great Wall museum.  Of course, by this time we, at least Lindsay and I, were a bit walked out but the museum housed some spectacular exhibits tracing the history of the Wall, and of the history of the region.  It was excellent and our guide provided a wealth of information, but many of us suffered with a touch of fatigue and information overload.  Outside the museum were a couple of imposing statues. One Lindsay thinks was a Lionicorn or qilin, a benevolent, chimera-like creature from Chinese mythology. And opposite this mythical creature is a ‘flying’ horse and rider with something in his hand. Emperor Wudi of the Han Dynasty (206 BCE to 220 CE), created roads and a postal service between the western regions and the interior. These afforded vital communication and trade networks that passed through the Jiayu Pass and we think this was one of those riders. 

Top: A 'courier' depictions found in archeaological sites. Bottom: a mythological Lionocorn or 'quilin'

Then it was back to the hotel and - you guessed it - another gargantuan lunch after which Lindsay and I took the rest of the afternoon off to relax – and like fat cats we fell asleep!  Most of the rest of the group went climbing to a Buddhist temple high in a cliff. Evidently it proved very challenging so we were pleased we had opted out. That evening after a simple self-catered meal of noodles, we collapsed.   But how glorious to have comfortable beds and bathrooms you could turn around in, etc.  With all the walking we’ve been doing Lindsay’s hips are quite troublesome, so he is popping painkillers, poor darling. All I can say is thank goodness for our hiking sticks - and pain killers. We are walking considerably more, in fact orders of magnitude more, than we usually do at home – and feeling it.

On the dining front, our hotel had a number of separate dining areas in each of the ‘east’ and ‘west’ wings (which were separate buildings). At each we had a huge private dining room with elaborate, heavily-laden, Lazy Susans featuring some aspect of the local produce. Wine was rarely available, but beer was popular – even I drank beer to quench thirst and to avoid the sweet soft drinks on offer. One shouldn’t complain – we ate extremely well in most places.