Day 1 Arrival in Zhangye

Welcome to Zhangye! Upon your arrival, a private car and driver will be sent to transfer you to your hotel. 

Day 2 Zhangye Danxia National Geological Park (Rainbow Mountains)

After breakfast, your personal guide and driver will meet you at your hotel lobby and accompany you to explore the Zhangye Danxia National Geological Park. The park is composed of two major sights: Rainbow Mountains and Binggou Danxia Landform. The former one is more famous and more frequented by tourists, but the latter one is also peculiar and strange. You will have a whole day to enjoy the breathtaking sights in those two landscapes and take photos.

The special Danxia landform is a kind of red-beds landform with peculiar peaks and strange stones formed by the long-term weathering and water erosion. It's mainly developed in the stones layers during Jurassic and Tertiary ages. Therefore, you will see a lot of red stones in different shapes, creating an extremely magnificent scene under the sun. If you happen to visit after the rain, the rainbow mountain will be more endearing and rich in color. The best time to shoot pictures is the afternoon when the mountains are best layered. There are many view platforms inside the park. No.4 platform is the best spot for sunset and sunrise, while the No.2 platform is the best for shooting a panoramic view of the mountains.




Your personal guide and driver will escort you back to hotel in the tour end.






    

Day 3 Matisi Grottoes, Train to Dunhuang

After breakfast, your guide and driver will take you to explore the Matisi Grottoes. It takes about 1.5 hours to get there.

Matisi Grottoes are located in the Mati Mountain of Sunan Yugu Autunomous County where there are ridges and peaks rising one after another, brooks gurgling, grass and flowers growing everywhere. In fact, it used to be a summer resort for Ayu Chanyu (chief of Xiongnu people) in Western Han Dynasty. It's still a great place to take resort in, but today, we come here not only for pleasure, but for culture. According to folk legend, when heavenly horse came to the human world, its one hoof trod on a rock here, leaving a mark of hoof mark. Hence the temple got its name. Matisi Grottoes are composed of seven small grottoes, including the Thousand-Buddha Cave, Southern and Northern Mati Temples, Upper, Lower and Middle Avalokitesvara Caves and Golden Tower Temple. The oldest grotto was built in Jin Dynasty by Guo Yu and his disciples. In the prime days, there were over 300 monks and disciples here.




After visiting the Matisi Grottoes, you will be accompanied to the train station and head for Dunhuang where another driver will be waiting for you.






    

Day 4 Dunhuang - Yulin Grottoes - Dunhuang

Before we get to any sight in Dunhuang, you will pay a visit to Yulin Grottoes in Guazhou, another significant grotto in Gansu province. It’s about 160km from Dunhuang, which means you will have a 2.5-hour drive today. However, the Yulin Grottoes will not disappoint you.

Yulin Grottoes are part of the Dunhuang Grottoes Art. It is consistent with the Mogao Caves in terms of Buddhist ideas, contents of murals, and expression methods. However, Yulin Grottoes were chiseled slightly later than the Mogao Caves, which is around the early Tang Dynasty and they underwent a long-term expansion and construction in eras of Five Dynasties, Song, Western Xia, Yuan, and Qing Dynasties. The Grottoes also have their own unique characteristics. For example, they have fully developed front rooms and long corridors, which you can't find in Mogao Caves. Inside the grottoes, you will also find a great amount of portraits of ethnic characters, painters and the wedding pictures in Han and Tibeten styles. In addition, some works of Yulin Grottoes, especially the Twenty-fifth Mural from Tubo period (around Tang Dynasty in central China) are very exquisite with simple figure, skilled and powerful lines, and bright but not foppish colors. What's more stunning is that the murals here are well-preserved, which means you can actually admire these fine arts.




In the evening, you will be taken back to your Dunhuang hotel.






    

Day 5 Mogao Caves, Singing Sand Dunes, Crescent Moon Lake

After breakfast, your day tour commences.

Your first sight today will be the reputed Mogao Grottoes, which comprise the largest, longest, richest and best-preserved treasure house for Buddhism study in the world. They were chiseled on the east cliffs of the Singing Sand Mountains, ranging 1680m from south to north. There are 735 caves built on the precipice in 15-30m. The whole site is composed of southern and northern area. In the southern area, there are 492 caves that contain 2,400 painted sculptures and 45,000 square meters of murals from dynasties like Northern Liang, Northern Wei, Western Wei, Northern Zhou, Sui, Tang, Northern Song, Uighur, Western Xia and Yuan. While the northern area has 243 caves, most of which are for disciples to practice daily activities, accommodate and bury the deceased. Each cave in the southern area has contained various sculptures, murals, and niches, depicting the all aspects of the society including the politics, economics, culture, arts, religions, ethnic relations, and daily life.

In the afternoon, you will have a visit to Crescent Spring and Singing Sand Dune. To get to the Crescent Spring, you have to pass the Singing Sand Dune.

Completely piled by sands, the Singing Sand Dune stretches 40km in length and 20km in width. When the winds blows, the sands on the Sand Dune give out loud drumming sound. With the winds tending soft, there will be melodious and gentle sound. This is how the sand dune got its name. There are a few theories why the sand can make such interesting sounds. A legend has it that in Han Dynasty, when the Han Army and Huns were having a war, a gust came and bury them with their war-horses. Later, some people say that the sand sound is the sound of fighting armies. Truthfully, it’s just the result of electricity, resonance, and the sands friction.

In the center of the Singing Sand Mountains, you will see a half-moon shape pond. This is the Crescent Lake. It's not very big, only 25 m in length and the deepest point is 5 meter. The lake is seated in the lowest point of the sand mountains, collecting the underground water all the time, which is probably why it wasn’t dried out in such a extremely arid place. However, it’s hard to explain why the lake stays clear with sands flowing everywhere around.




Return to your hotel at the end of the tour.






    

Day 6 Yardan National Park

After breakfast, let’s head for the Yardan National Park.

The park is located about 160km from the Dunhuang city, which takes about 3 hours to drive there. It is the largest Yardang landform in China and a national park with distinct Yardang geological feature. Such kind of landform is the example geomorphic type in extremely arid regions. It’s the creation of rains and winds in a time span of over 10,000 years. The soft parts of the earth were slowly eroded, leaving the hard rocks still standing there. There are many rocks in odd shapes, which earned them names like “Mongolian Bao”, “Camel”, “Stone Bird”, and “The Golden Lion Welcoming Guests”. Inside the park, you will find a lot of interesting sites, but one that you can’t miss is the Yardang Ghost Town where you will see the famous Aisikexiaer Castle.




In the evening, your tour guide will take you back to Dunhuang hotel.






    

Day 7 Dunhuang Museum

There is only one place arranged for you, the Dunhuang Museum, which serves as a wrap up of this amazing Gansu tour.

Dunhuang Museum is located in downtown Dunhuang. It's a museum dedicated to display the history and culture of Dunhuang city as an important stopover along the Silk Road and the relics excavated from the Mogao Caves. It's not as big as the internationally first-class museums, still, it's a great place to understand the art of Mogao Caves. The exhibitions inside the museum are classified into two types. The types one is for displaying the art of Mogao Caves, which contains the replica of undeveloped 45th grotto and some famous bamboo books, while the type two is to display the Silk Road Culture, in which the Brick of Kylin is the treasure of the museum.




You can choose to visit the Dunhuang Museum either in the morning or in the afternoon and have the other half day free.






    

Day 8 Departure Dunhuang

Your Zhangye - Dunhuang comes to the end today. Your driver will pick you up at the appointed time and take you to the train station or airport.