Back to the Yellow Hats. Labrang Monastery.

Prayer wheels at Labrang Monastery.  (Photo by Photo by Cardboardbird.  Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons.)

From Xian, our first on our Silk Road route will be the town of Xiahe, an ethnically Tibetan town in Gansu Province. The name of the town in both Chinese and Tibetan, literally means, "Xia River" refering to the Daxia River. The town lies along one main street parallel to the river; the Chinese section (commercial) lies to the eastern end of the road and the Tibetan section lies at the western end. In between lies the town's most famous landmark - Labrang Monastery.

At the Crossroads. Dunhuang.

Crescent Lake, Dunhuang.  (Photo by Sigismund von Dobschütz.  Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons.)

Situated on the edge of the Gobi Desert in western China, the city of Dunhuang was founded by Emperor Wudi of the Han dynasty in 111 BC at the cross roads of the ancient Southern and Northern routes.

Ancient Trade Routes. China Silk Road.

An illustration of Marco Polo's caravan being guarded against an attack.

To say that I have a traveler's obsession with the Silk Road is an understatement.  My dream is to travel all the routes that make up this ancient artery of trade routes spanning countries from Asia to Europe passing through China, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq, Turkey, Greece, and Italy.

The China Silk Road. Itinerary.

Maijishan Grotto, Tianshui.  (Photo by Shizhao.  Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons.)

I  kicked off this year with plans to travel to Korea with my friend George. He was only able to take a short time off of work to go with me.  But there was no way I was going to fly all the way to Korea for less than 2 weeks.  My travel mantra is that for every hour I fly, I have to stay at least a day.   That would mean a minimum of 16 days in Korea and George was not able to do that.  So, I needed to find some other place to go to to make up the time.  Originally, I had thought of going to Hong Kong.  Our trip would coincide with the Annual Mid Autumn aka Moon Festival and there would be no better place to celebrate that than in China.  Hong Kong was a close destination.