Here's another tidbit from our China trip. After Taiwan and Guilin (the pointy mountains with the river view) we headed up to the northwestern side of Mainland China, along the ancient silk road. We saw the western end of the Great Wall in Jiayuguan (a 4-hour plane ride will take you to the eastern end near Beijing), the Ancient city of Gaochang (way cool for some strange reason--maybe cuz it's still standing 2,000 years after construction out in the middle of NOWHERE!), a Taiwanese daoist temple up by a mountain "Heavenly" lake --way cool, and camel rides in Dunhuang. Of course there were all the kebabs you can eat (note the other varieties of skewered treats--we stayed pretty safe--note the lack of refrigeration in the market!), and plenty of Uighur ("wee-gurrr") people who look like they are Turkish, grape arbors, and lots of sand (home, sweet home). It was cool, and a totally different side of China... We liked it.
Our favorite guide was our beloved Jack (shown here with the driver holding our Leah-surrogate, the black poodle). He was great, and we really didn't know it until we saw what the others were like! He knew a lot, and was very patient and helpful. We went to the northwest because our goal of Tibet and Everest base camp was not to be realized due to sectarian violence before we arrived in China. It reopened to foreigners 3 days before we left Asia. Boohoo. Nick is shown here practicing archery to kill some dummies that were supposed to be like all the Mongols attacking China (it was harder than it looked but he gave it a galant effort).
Yes, we did get to ride camels (they also had a toboggan ride down the sand dunes which was fun), and we visited some amazing Buddhist grottoes in the afternoon (Big, I mean, BIG Buddhas inside--like 50 feet high or long depending on whether they were lying down or sitting up-sorry no pictures allowed but you can see the ancient holes in the side of the hill).
We enjoyed having an afternoon of rest after all this because we'd been at it awhile. We headed from there, with an overnight in Lanzhou (big Chinese city you've never heard of because there are TONS of big Chinese cities), we headed for Chengdu, just a few weeks after the big earthquake.
