Desert dunes and painted caves. Private guiding, your own vehicle, and an itinerary built around how long you actually have.
Dunhuang was the last great oasis before the Silk Road disappeared into the Taklamakan Desert, and it holds the single most important Buddhist art site in China: the Mogao Grottoes, 492 painted cave temples cut into a cliff and protected for sixteen centuries.
Outside town, Crescent Moon Lake sits in a ring of dunes that have been singing — literally, the sand hums — for as long as anyone has recorded it. Sunset here, with a camel train crossing the ridge, is the image most travelers take home from the Silk Road.
Two days: one for the caves, one for the dunes at sunset and the night market. Dunhuang is a natural stop on any Silk Road route by air or rail.
From $659 per person
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