Day 1: Chang’an to Dunhuang

From China, travelers would set out from the great walled city of Ch’ang-an, for many centuries China’s first or second city. Westerners today know this city best for the remarkable army of full-sized terra cotta statues discovered in 1974 in the tomb of the first emperor. Already by 210 B.C.E., Ch’ang-an was a large capital city, and by the seventh century C.E. it would have an estimated two million people living in its borders. Ch’ang-an was the main market city for Western trade, a true cosmopolitan city where Easterners and Westerners came together to sell the silk, gems, glass, metalwork, perfumes, spices, tea, and other desirables they had.

Leaving Ch’ang-an from the West Gate, your caravan will soon find itself in the Wei River Valley. Heading toward inner Asia, your group will follow the Wei River westward out of Ch’ang for some 250 to 300 miles. Here, in about 300 B.C.E., the Chinese built an early version of the Great Wall, at which was the outer limits of their dominion. This part of the route was known as the Imperial Highway, and was well maintained and safe for travelers. The road was hardened or even paved, suitable for wheeled vehicles, and routinely patrolled by Chinese officials.

From the valley of the upper Wei, your caravan will cut slightly northwest through more forested, hilly terrain and come to the Huang (Yellow) River, just before it makes a great loop. Your group will cross the Huang River at Lanzou and continue westward.

The Huang River springs from the range of mountains known as the K’unlun, the northern fringe of the great and lofty Tibetan Plateau, of which farther south are the skyscraping Himalayas. Arcing northward, the Silk Road followed the northern outposts of the K’unlun, a range called the Nan Shan (Southern Mountains) for over 200 miles. This route along the foothills that your caravan is travelling was essentially an elongated oasis. To the north was a great expanse of desert, the outer reaches of the infamous Gobi. With plentiful grazing lands and fertile fields, this panhandle strip of land was a natural thoroughfare to the West, and was so vital that China extended the Great Wall to enclose it as soon as direct relations were opened with the West, about 100 B.C.E. From the top of the Huang River’s northern loop, the Great Wall ran down to and along the Kansu Corridor. Watchtowers and lookouts were stationed along the way, and troops were generally on call in case of trouble.

At the end of the Kansu Corridor, between civilization and wilderness, stood the frontier outpost of Dunhuang. Long a center of Buddhist culture, Dunhuang was often known as the City of Sands, for here travellers faced the great dunes of drifting sands that would characterize much of the landscape for over 1,500 miles. Nearby are the famous Caves of the Thousand Buddhas, a great cliff honeycombed with monks cells that your caravan will visit and explore out of curiosity at this wonder.