Windswept desert: Monday 16 June 2014, by Ian Neuss

An early start from Dunhuang saw us following the new rail line out of town and a very long climb up a shallow incline to 3,800 m. Arriving there we had coffee and it started to snow!

No-one wanted to linger so off again on the S305 to Lenghu, a town with military police, a prison and little else -- a public service transfer nightmare. We then entered a windswept landscape that had been stripped of all its topsoil, 100 km of hummocks with the occasional gypsum mine. On and on through large dunes, beautifully built by the winds, through rocky wind-smoothed hills, to a large anticline dotted with oil derricks, all working away.

This was a day of 560 km of driving and we were buggered.