Dunhuang is a particularly important city and surrounding area on the Silk Road.  One of our visits was to Crescent Spring Lake.  It is an oasis in the Gobi desert.   I was not feeling in top form that day and there was some confusion about what one could do there and I never made it on a camel.  You can see we wore orange over boots to protect our shoes from camel smelling sand.  The oasis is small but pretty amazing knowing it springs from underground water.  The dunes are large and it was hot.  This experience really made me appreciate what the travelers on the Silk Road had to endure to make this trek.   We just had to tolerate 6 – 8 hours sitting on an air conditioned bumpy bus to get from city to city.  That was difficult enough for modern travel.

The landscape included desert and snow capped mountains in the distance.  The brick made structures are for drying grapes as this is a grape growing region, but Muslim one and therefore, not a wine region.

Crecent Lake Crescent Lake 3 Crecent Spring

 

 

Grape drying