Walking along ancient structures at Jiayuguan

1996 — the year when an idea to travel to China’s far northwest started forming in my head. That summer, while visiting Shanhaiguan in Hebei, I stood where the Great Wall reached the Bohai Gulf at Old Dragon Head. With the sound of the sea mixing with verdant local greenery, I thought of the wall, stretching across much of northwestern China. Those landscapes were so different from those around Shanhaiguan.

In September 1997, I relaxed on a hard-berth bunk in train 205, pulling out of Lanzhou. Sleeping for a few hours, dawn crept up as we snaked along the Hexi Corridor. To the south rose snow-capped peaks of the Qilian Mountains, while extensive waterless deserts stretched northward. This was one of the more hostile environments Silk Road travelers would have to encounter. There were some semi-nomadic encampments near the tracks, where shepherds took their flocks.

For much of that journey I sat at a pull-down seat, transfixed by the awesome scenes beyond the windows. At times the mountains came in eye-poppingly close to the railway. Settlements, such as Shandan and Zhangye, grew around occasional oases where the available water supply could support life. In the surrounding countryside, donkeys pulled wooden carts loaded with giant cabbages while passing fields of ripening corn. This soon gave way to the barren desert. Gradually the valley widened as we approached Jiayuguan, ten hours and 776 kilometers away from Lanzhou.