Caravans of Time: The Silk Road Journey

Tour Highlights

• Tianchi, or Heavenly Lake: still water below snow-capped peaks, ringed by spruce forest
• Urumqi, capital of Xinjiang and the biggest city in China's west, some 2,500 kilometres inland
• Emin Minaret in Turpan, the last of China's ancient Islamic minarets still standing
• Turpan, a green oasis of vineyards in the third-deepest inland basin on Earth
• The Flaming Mountains, red sandstone ridges that seem to shift in the heat of summer
• Mingsha Shan, the singing dunes above Crescent Moon Spring
• The Thousand Buddha Caves at Bezeklik, cut into a cliff and still painted inside
• Dunhuang, a desert town whose springs and markets have drawn travellers for two millennia

Itinerary at a Glance

1. Day 1: Australia and New Zealand to Urumqi — Two flights and a long haul west end in Urumqi, the city where this route begins, in China's far northwest. Xinjiang's capital is the biggest city in the country's west, and no other major city on the
2. Day 2: Heavenly Lake (Tianchi) — No need to set an alarm. Tianchi, or Heavenly Lake, lies in the mountains above the city and fills the crater of an old volcano. Zhou dynasty legend has King Mu meeting the goddess Xi Wangmu, the Quee
3. Day 3: Urumqi to Turpan — The road out of Urumqi runs over bare gravel country before dropping into the Turpan basin, where irrigation makes the ground green again. Grapes are what grows here and the town moves at an unhurried
4. Day 4: Turpan: karez channels, Jiaohe and Bezeklik — Turpan survives on water carried underground. The karez channels you visit this morning have done that job for 4,000 years. The afternoon's ruins at Jiaohe were laid out more than 2,300 years ago on a
5. Day 5: Bullet train to Dunhuang — The morning passes on the high-speed line, and by early afternoon you step out in Dunhuang, the Gansu oasis that traders once called this route's pearl. It has been a meeting point for commerce, relig
6. Day 6: Dunhuang: the Mogao Caves — Mogao is the reason people come to Dunhuang, and today belongs to it. The first chambers were cut in 366 AD. Work continued for a thousand years, leaving 492 painted caves, some 45,000 square metres i
7. Day 7: The Gobi road to Jiayuguan — A long westward drive, with the Qilian Mountains low on the horizon and little but gravel and sky between you and them. The stretch is broken with stops at the desert monuments along the road: Child o
8. Day 8: On to Zhangye and the Danxia hills — An early start for the 250-kilometre run to Zhangye, with the afternoon set aside for the national geological park at Qicai Danxia, outside town. The hills there are banded in emerald, indigo, gold an
9. Day 9: Zhangye's Giant Buddha, then Wuwei — Dafo Temple comes first this morning. It dates to 1098, and its main hall holds the country's largest indoor reclining Buddha, built up in clay. Then the road to Wuwei, where the Leitai Han tomb has s
10. Day 10: South to Lanzhou — Another road day, roughly 300 kilometres south to Lanzhou, the Gansu capital: a city of about 3.2 million on the Yellow River. The afternoon is given to the city: the Gansu Provincial Museum, the Yell
11. Day 11: Bingling caves by boat, back to Lanzhou — The day's outing is by water. From a jetty outside Lanzhou you take a boat upstream to the gorge where the caves at Bingling are cut into the cliff, well above the river. The first carvings are roughl
12. Day 12: High-speed rail to Xi'an — A morning on the train brings you to Xi'an, the city the old records call Chang'an, at the eastern end of the caravan routes. Emperors ruled here, and envoys, monks and merchants came and went in both
13. Day 13: The Terracotta Army, then old Xi'an — The Terracotta Army fills the morning. The pits outside the city hold thousands of figures at full human scale, along with horses and chariots, and no two faces are alike; they were made in the third
14. Day 14: Your own day in Xi'an — Nothing is scheduled today. Xi'an is yours to explore as you like.
15. Day 15: Xi'an to Australia and New Zealand — After breakfast you are driven out to the airport in time for the flight home. Rooms stay yours until 12:00pm if you would rather leave slowly, and the hotel will keep bags for anyone departing later
16. Day 16: Home in Australia and New Zealand — You land back in Australia and New Zealand, with two weeks and a few thousand kilometres of desert, mountain and oasis country behind you.

What's Included

• Return international flights in economy class with a full-service airline
• Fourteen nights, split between 3-star and 4-star properties
• Hantang Hotel in Urumqi (or a comparable property)
• Ibis Styles Hotel in Turpan (or a comparable property)
• Fu Hua International Hotel in Dunhuang (or a comparable property)
• ChenFeng Grand Hotel in Jiayuguan City (or a comparable property)
• Xinshengyue International Hotel in Zhangye (or a comparable property)
• Tianma Hotel in Wuwei (or a comparable property)
• Holiday Inn Express in Lanzhou (or a comparable property)
• Metropark Huanyu Hotel in Xi'an (or a comparable property)
• Breakfast every morning
• Two lunches
• One welcome dinner
• Private vehicles with air conditioning for all road travel
• High-speed rail link between Turpan and Dunhuang
• High-speed rail link between Lanzhou and Xi'an
• Transfers to and from the airport when the tour starts and finishes