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 Dunhuang is an oasis town with a lively market tucked back from the busy main drag. The people watching was endlessly interesting. Chess and pool games played on in the marketplace under the shade of tarpaulins, while scallion pancakes were fried and people dug into big steaming bowls of soup with unidentifiyable ingredients poking out of the hot broth. Motorcycles were a popular mode of transportation here, the seats of which were usually draped with the sort of rug also used under a camel's saddle.

One early morning, by the light of a full moon, we got on the bus and drove out of town into the desert to watch the sun come up. We sat on the barren ground and waited. All was quiet except for an occasional call of a cuckoo bird in the distance. Back on the bus we ate our picnic breakfasts and continued on for many miles through the flat barren landscape with a distant view of the snowy Qi Lian mountains keeping us company the whole time. Finally we arrived at the western end of the Great Wall. Here there isn't much left of the wall as it's mud bricks, the same color as the ground they rise from, slowly break down and get swallowed up by the desert.
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