Photos

spent Easter in Gansu (China), following the Silk Route from Lanzhou to Jiayuguan and Dunhuang... of all sites Jiayuguan Fort impressed me most, as having preserved a sense of history... Dunhuang is a China Disneyland, so much the town has become a tourist hub.

here is what Frommers say about Jiayuguan: "At the northwest end of the narrow Hé Xi corridor lies a fort that marks the western extremity of the Míng Great Wall. During the Míng dynasty, Jiayùguan was regarded as the end of the Chinese world, beyond which lay the strange lands and peoples of the western lands…”

I arrived early, with a morning train from Lanzhou, and was the first to enter the Fort. When I was coming out an hour later, a few Chinese tour groups were rushing in... I was lucky to have the Fort to myself and to listen to the silence of the Gobi desert.