Xinjiang Province October 4

My apologies to Karen's followers. For some reason Karen's emails to me were being returned. hmmmm Sidney

October 4, 2010

Sleeping on the train was iffy at best. I woke up about 1:00 a.m. when the train stopped at a station for a while. I slept until 4:00 a.m. when the conductor told Rachelle it was time to get our bags out in the hall because we were almost at the Liuyuan station. We rubbed the sleep from our eyes, went to the restroom, brushed our teeth and waited for the train to stop. We dragged our luggage off the train and walked around the station to find our new guide. Henry was waiting for us with a big smile on his face. The next group came in just twenty minutes behind us and we were off. The road into Dunhuang was two hours of roller coaster. We tried to sleep but were jolted awake several times. The best part was pulling into the hotel and finding a western toilet. We ate a nice breakfast of rice porridge and toast.


Not a lot of room to get our bags  out in the "hall"...

Next on the agenda: a camel ride. We were already dirty so more dust would not make any difference. We all rented orange boots so it would keep the bottom of our pants cleaner and help us walk on the sand easier. The camels were tied together in groups of four or five. We had to wait quite a while because we had five in our group and only four camels. Rachelle saved the day once again by telling the driver that he couldn’t just leave one of us behind. The guide put three of us on the camels and then we waited for a while to get the other two on their animals. 

Hanging on for dear life!!!

The two camels ahead of me got up, so suddenly I find myself being shaken forward and backward as the camel got to his feet. You have seen pictures of the camel sitting down with their feet tucked under them. I think they get up with their back legs first so first I was thrown forward. Luckily I was holding on for dear life in spite of the fact that I was just sitting on a stationary camel. Next, the camel got up on his front legs and threw me backward. Very rocky start. Then my camel got tired of standing and decided to walk around a little. Of course, I started screaming and Rachelle told me that it scares the camels so I stopped. Never mind that the camel drivers are all screaming at each other the entire time. Obviously the camels can tell the difference between an American woman screaming and the Urgurs screaming.

We finally got another camel and got everyone loaded up and ready to head out. My camel must have been getting all of his wiggles out because it rocked forward and backward until I was afraid I was going to have whip lash. At this point in time I decided to name my camel and start talking to him. I called him Balthazar and told he was a good camel. It worked. He started smoothing out the ride and we got along very well from than on. He was rather impatient at times and wouldn’t stay in the line with other others. I guess he wanted to be the leader, but eventually he would get back in line.

We got to go on the long camel ride up the mountain where we climbed off and walked to the top where we could see for miles in every direction. The sky was a brilliant blue and the sand stretched forever. It was so worth it. The only thing that marred the blissful scene was the men on four-wheelers who were driving their noisy machines all over the dunes. It was such a contrast to the quaint scene of the rows of camels climbing up the mountain.

Stylin' in our orange booties.....

Our next destination was the Mogao Grottos, which are listed on the UNESCO. We had a tour guide who spoke English and we were hooked to her with a listening device. That was good because the caves were so crowded that we wouldn’t have been able to hear anything without the head phones. We visited nine of the caves and heard about the three Buddhas—past, present, and future. It was very interesting. She told us that they found 15,000 manuscripts in the library cave in several languages, among them Hebrew. Interesting!