Silk Road Day 2 - Bing Ling Si

Today we got a car to take us on a tour of Bing Ling Si, a place a little way up from Lanzhou on the Yellow River. Here there are lots of Buddhist carvings in a cliff face by the river. It took us about 2 hours by car and then about 30 minutes by speed boat.

The carvings and statues are still quite well intact. They weren't destroyed by the Red Guards during the cultural revolution, or stolen by western explorers because of their inaccessibility.

It was quite an overcast day with a bit of rain but the scenery along the Yellow River was still stunning.
However, the land in Gansu Province is quite arid and rocky.

We weren't really meant to take too many close up photos at Bing Ling Si so not too much to show here.

We got back to Lanzhou and went to a hot pot place ( I think) for dinner - really delicious. They have a recessed stove in the middle of your table where they cook the meat and vegetables. Then you dip it in a sauce and eat it.

We caught the overnight train to Jiayuguan. We took the hard sleeper which was fine, they are actually not that hard (well no harder than normal Chinese beds which are harder than average). They have 3 levels of bunks and we were on the top so a bit of gymnastics. The toilets were pretty gross but manageable. You're not allowed to use them when the train is stopped so that gives you an idea of the plumbing. The train took about 15 hours and cost 113RMB each (AUS$20).