Day 36: Dunhuang (敦煌) – July 23

Another morning, another round of beef noodles, and we’re on our way to Dunhuang, another city along the old silk route. Over the 500+km drive, the desert landscape took hold and it felt like I was going nowhere! Seriously, how did people manage to walk across such long journeys to trade silk? And that’s just like an insignificant of the trip from Mediterranean/Europe?!?!? Now, even 1.5km is barely walking distance!!! Crazy.

Dunhuang, although it is surrounded by desert terrain, is actually a very nice little town with a lot of things catering to tourists! We found numerous coffee shops (this is China, coffee is a luxury good) with free wifi, comfy sofas, cozy decor and parked ourselves there for a couple hours and relaxing to the music and caffeine. Then we headed out and sat down in one of the street market vendors selling BBQ chicken wings and lamb skewers! While eating dinner, we overheard a very strange but familiar sound… ENGLISH! We met this Korean guy that was traveling alone throughout the northwest of China, so we shared some stories and chatted up a bit!

So tomorrow we’ll start actually start seeing some of the sights around the city, stick around!