Silk Road - Lanzhou Yellow River Stone Forest

 The Silk Road has been on my agenda for many years but reports from earlier travellers of a long, strenuous journey with not much good food helped to push it off my travel plans until this year when a friend suggested what seemed like a doable tour this September.  Of course things have changed over the years.  We ended up with a remarkably memorable trip, filled with historical contexts, although still strenuous because of long distances but definitely we travelled in comfort with lots of delicious food and exceptional lodgings.   The tradeoff is, many of the places we visited are no longer exotic horse and wagon country but sophisticated big cities filled with highway access ramps and SUVs.  It's a good thing then that it is scenery and not culture that is the focus of this Northern Xinjiang tour.  

The tour started in Lanzhou and not Xian as many Silk Road tours did, but since I've been to Xian twenty odd years ago, I'd rather keep the old memories of this ancient city rather than have them spoilt by new ones of a modern city.  

We arrived a day earlier so we can do a private tour of the Yellow River Stone Forest, a two hour drive from Lanzhou.  The red loess of the Yellow River basin surrounded us wherever we turned.  It certainly reminded me of the American Southwest, the red earth in Sedona and the hoodoos in Bryce Canyon.  From the Visitor Centre, we were taken on electric buses through the 22 hairpin bends of the road that showed us the Stone Forest from different angles on the road.   

In the riverside village of Old Longwan, where we had lunch at a local home, we were able to see the Yellow River and its yellow waters in all its meandering glory.  The ride on the inflated sheepskin raft, which I had dreaded when I first saw it as part of the tour (think - non-swimmer!), turned out to be an amazing experience bringing us ever so closer to the "mother river" - all caution tossed to the wind!  The raft was an ancient form of transportation and it took us closer to the Stone Forest entrance.

We then took a ride on a shuttle bus into the Stone Forest trail.  We got off half way into the canyon so we can experience the "forest".  The big disappointment was we were not able to get a panoramic view of the stone forest itself from a viewing platform that was formerly accessible by cable car, but this was no longer available.  It would be too long and difficult a hike for us and we needed another two hours to get back to Lanzhou.  

Note: There is another "Stone Forest" in China - Shilin in Yunnan Province, these are limestone and therefore completel different.

It took a whole day for us to get to Lanzhou from Hong Kong.  This is the nightview from our  hotel room,

Our first bowl of the famous Lanzhou noodles at breakfast the following morning

 - handmade in-house.  This would be the first of many of course!

On the way to the Stone Forest - a glimpse of the city

One of the first things I noticed - extensive erosion control on the slopes on both sides of the highway.  Loess is one of the softest soil on earth.

 

This reminded me of the drive from Sedona to Page in Arizona.

Baiyin City as we approached the Stone Forest

Panorama of the Stone Forest National Geological Park, the Visitor Centre and the Old Longwan village

Views near the top of the road

The Yellow River meandering through its basin - you can see one of the hairpin bends on the road

Corn fields just outside the village at the foot of the Stone Forest

The village decorated to welcome visitors

The dining room of the village house where we ate lunch

This is the village store although we didn't see any villagers around

The village waterfront

One of many waterwheels we would see along the Yellow River

The raft we would be sitting on - made of inflated sheepskin

The three of us sat back to back behind the paddler

The raft had to be carried up the steps!  Photo credit:  Steed  陳天騎

Our view from the middle of the river

Couldn't believe my luck, encountering a lifer in the middle of the river - a pair of Eastern spot-billed ducks

Near the entrance of the trail through the Stone Forest

Trail inside the Stone Forest

We were actually walking through a canyon with these huge formations on both sides of the trail

These hoodoos reminded me of the ones in Bryce Canyon in Arizona.  There are many interpretations of the "faces", "figures" and "animals" that the rocks resembled, a lot of mythical beasts and characters - great place for an active imagination!

An evil conjurer with a long-beard...?

An orangutan?

The hoodoo at the top had been named
"Monkey King on his pilgrimage to get the western scriptures"

These panoramas give us a sense of the scale of the land we just visited. It's a remarkable area, no wonder people get emotional about the Yellow River.