Stuck in the desert

SEPTEMBER 10, 2007: Stuck in Jiayuguan waiting for bikes to arrive. Photos

Some pictures from the surrounding desert/rebuilt wall areas:




The end of the Great Wall is brilliant. No-one pumped it up as being spectacular or anything - we were expecting a broken-up mound of dirt and a token sign. Instead, after we arrived we were directed down some stairs into the ground and suddenly we were standing on a glass-floored balcony 100m above a river looking out over this grand canyon of China. It was really the opposite of the average tourist experience, where everything you hear about a place before you see it leads to emptiness if not disappointment.




This is Jiayuguan, a massive 14th century fort - the gate into China on the Silk Road.




It's the last gate in the great wall. It's a well-known tourist specimen with an amazing story/myth. You might have heard about it (i hadn't, i'm ashamed to admit). The one where the 14th century (Ming) engineer was instructed to specify precisely the materials that would be needed to build the fort, and after it was finished there remained only one brick. The brick is on the ledge in the picture below: