Camels, Sand, and a Bloody Nose

The weeks never were going slow since I got here, but it seems that the last month has slipped by in a matter of seconds. It's actually quite flooring how fast ten weeks can pass you by. I don't feel as if I missed anything and I wouldn't change a thing about this study abroad. But still, the days are going all too quickly. Either way, in the past week I was able to go to yet another place that I would have never dreamed of going and speak more Chinese than I ever imagined I would know (this time all by myself). The distance from Chengdu to my desert destination, Dunhuang, is about the same as from Tampa to Detroit. Needless to say, a long trip; especially when there's no direct flights that connect the two cities. So after an hour flight to Lanzhou Airport, an hour bus into the city, a transfer to the train station, and a 14 hour train ride I finally arrived. Considering that I didn't even check when trains left Lanzhou for Dunhuang throughout the day, I feel like I was really lucky to get there as smoothly as I did - without a bump in the road, air, or tracks.

Waking up at about 7AM on the train to the sound of other passengers rustling around isn't exactly my favorite thing in the world. But when the first thing you see is a stretch of desert until the world eventually starts to curve too much for you to see any farther, there is little to complain about. At about 830AM I hopped off the train into a place that feels the exact opposite of my former home, Florida, and my current one in Chengdu. If my body is right then I would guess that the humidity in Dunhuang hovers around 0%, sometimes going into the negatives just to show you that it can. I was immediately rushed by people when I walked out from the station offering me a cab into the city. A quick explanation of where I was going and $3 later, I was on my way. We headed into downtown, took the turn south, and headed down the main drag of Dunhuang towards the sand dunes and my hostel.

This is what had brought me all this way. Not only spending time in the desert, but a desert that I had only seen before in movies. Not just a bland ground with no grass, but also huge sand dunes that go on for miles and somehow seem to look like they're made of gold when the sun catches them right. Before I had even reached my hostel I knew I had made the right decision by coming here. The view was absolutely perfect, better than any picture could ever capture. And to top it off, I was staying right at the foot of the dunes for only $4 a night.

Immediately after checking in, I found another traveler to go explore some of what the city holds. Our first destination was to the Mogao Caves. The caves are surprisingly a little famous and recognized internationally for their cultural importance to Buddhism. As a quick summary, it's about 500 caves that are carved out of a huge slab of sandstone - about 250 housing Buddhist artwork and the rest were used to house monks a few thousand years ago. Although not the reason why I came to Dunhuang, I was happy to see that there is some culture blended in with this naturally beautiful place. However, I felt like the caves were slightly disappointing. There were some very cool carvings and paintings, but we weren't able to look into about 98% of the caves, leaving more to the imagination than I would have liked. Ironically, the highlight of going to the caves for me was buying the ticket. All I did was simply walk up, ask for two tickets (including my new friend David from Wales) and hand her the money. But I came to find out that she sold me a ticket for a Chinese tour guide instead of an English one. This means that the Chinese I spoke to her was actually good enough for her to think I could handle an entire tour! Considering I literally only knew how to say "hello" and "thank you" ten weeks ago, I was absolutely stoked to have this mistaken compliment thrown my way.

After our tour (unfortunately in boring English), we quickly made our way back to the hostel to catch the overnight camel trek through the desert that we had booked. The trip went from 5PM on Saturday until 9AM on Sunday and included a trip on a camel about three hours into the desert and setting up camp there for the night underneath the open desert sky. And so my camel, Deng Deng, was to be my best friend for the next 17 hours as I slowly chafed my inner thighs on his back through the desert, enjoying every minute of it. Here's a short video on top of one of the dunes at about 8PM on Saturday.

After this I made my way back down and started to relax around our tent. Dinner called for Ramen noodles, a cucumber, and bread (not good, but with how little I get to eat bread now, all bread is good bread). The sun eventually set over the dunes and night was taking over. I was looking forward to being able to enjoy the stars but unfortunately even the desert gets cloudy some nights. So instead I packed it in pretty early and stayed out of the 30 mile per hour sand flying around outside.

It was a very early morning for both me and Deng Deng since we had to get up at sunrise. But you gotta do what you gotta do in the desert. We quickly made our way downhill in the dunes and got back to the hostel in a little over 2 hours where I had to say goodbye to my best friend.

On Sunday, me and a few other people decided to get a cab for the afternoon and take the 170 km round trip journey to check out one of the last outposts of the Great Wall as well as a gate to the Silk Road. Both of these ended up being quite anticlimactic, but I'm glad I made it out there. The Great Wall outside of Dunhuang doesn't exactly look like you would imagine it to. After over a thousand years, the world tends to do what it wants to buildings - even if they are famous.

That night was spent exploring the night market in downtown, sampling the local dumplings, and getting to know some new people. It turns out that my camel trekking buddy - remember Welsh David - was in Urumqi last week when the riot broke out between the Han Chinese and the Uighurs. I'm not a good source of reliable news on this but he did have an interesting story for me. He said that on Tuesday, the day after the riots, he was walking around town around midday just doing some seeing of the city. And at about 1PM all of the stores closed their shops and all the owners went outside with weapons in hand. Some had bats and beating sticks, some had long metal poles with knives on the end, and some were sharpening their swords on the curb. It really was a surreal site, he told me, to see how alive and well racism is in China. It was really interesting to hear some of what went on in Urumqi without having to read slanted Chinese news.

The next day I spent about five hours just hanging around on the dunes, not doing much at all besides soaking in the sun, the view, and the sand before my train back to Lanzhou that afternoon. Later that night, on the the 14 hour ride back the other way, the lack of moisture in Dunhuang finally took its toll as blood started slowly falling out of my nose. I took my time and made my way to the sinks by the toilets in between carts to clean up, only to find a part of China that I'll hold forever in my heart. A middle-aged man was using the faucet near the ground to wash his own feces off of his foot, seems we had taken an unexpected turn while he was taking care of things. And this is my true final memory of Dunhuang, a small city that is absolutely beautiful and typically Chinese all at once.

The next morning I woke up roughly 45 minutes outside of Lanzhou with my neck hurting from the terribly uncomfortable hard seat that I had been in for the last half a day. After pulling into Lanzhou I helped David get his train ticket to his next destination and sent him on his way. Now I had to figure out how to get to Lanzhou's airport about an hour away. I really didn't want to have to rely on a cab because it would have ended up being expensive as hell (I now am only thinking in terms of RMB now and not the dollar). So here came my true test of Chinese. Walking up to the information desk I asked how to get to the airport from the train station. The attendant (talking as fast as humanly possible) of course told me to just take a cab. I explained to her in fluent Chinese that taking a cab is too expensive, and asked about a bus that goes there. She said that the city has one but it's about a 20 minute walk from there. She gave me the directions, I nodded my head, said thanks, and started walking in what I hoped was the right way (but honestly thought there was no way in hell it was right). But sure enough after about 15 minutes I stumble across a bus with characters on it saying it was heading to the airport. So there you have it, I'm now fluent in Chinese. Sure enough I got to the airport no problem and here I am back in Chengdu, reminiscing of my days with Deng Deng.