China Day 12

Another amazing day. Left Zhangye after breakfast and headed north west on another 6 lane expressway which is part of the transport corridor for Northern China. The expressway has two dual raillines plus mammoth power towers running beside it. There is a constant convoy of trucks travelling in both directions and this goes for hundreds of kilometres. In travelling to our next stop Jiayuguan we sat on 120kmh for about three hours with no delays - try doing that at home!

This trip also took us through part of the Gobi Desert with massive solar farms which makes a lot of sense - not using up any farmland of course. We also passed a massive wind turbine factory and saw numerous huge wind blades being transported on the expressways - no escort vehicles either! An extraordinary journey.

We arrived in Jiauguan for lunch and then went out to the Juiauguan Fort which is a huge walled fort which was the entry point into China for the silk road travellers. The Great Wall extends either direction from the fort so all traffic had to come through here. As you would expect, massive walls and gates with a trap in the middle if you didn't meet the "friend or foe" test. Again, the scale blows the mind.

Next stop was the Xuanbi Great Wall which is the Western end of the Great Wall and walked along part of it until it got just too steep - so we've walked on the Eastern and the Western sections of the Wall! Just a gap of several thousand km in between - the Wall is circa 6000km long!

There was an interesting display acknowledging people associated with the silk road such as Marco Polo of course. 

Back home for one night in Jiayuguan but leave I the morning for Dunhuang - another long drive apparently.