Distance covered - 3488km
The 8pm train from JiaYuGuan arrived in ZhangYe by midnight, and it was starting to freeze. From the train station, I shared a taxi with an elderly lady and headed towards the city centre, which was around 10km away. By the time I reached the hotel, it was already almost 1am. I virtually collapsed after taking a nice hot bath, and dozed off in the clean white sheets of the hotel.
The next morning I woke up around 8am in the morning but I was too lazy to get out from the bed. It has been a while since I've lazed on the bed after arriving in China; I missed the feeling of procrastinating too much! Since the train to Lanzhou would only be around 3pm, and there was nothing much to do here, I decided to take my sweet time watching cable tv.
By 11am, I started exploring the city, heading towards the infamous Da Fo Si (Great Buddha Temple), which is around 2km away. This temple houses the biggest wooden indoor reclining buddha statue in China, and some precious artefacts like the Golden inscriptions of the Heart Sutra, and many others in its museum.
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| Great Buddha Temple |
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| Main temple |
Actually, ZhangYe's most famous attraction would be the ZhangYe Danxia (SunSet) Landscape, 40km away from the town city. The unique geological landscape of multi-coloured rock would definitely be astounding, especially under the golden rays of sunset. However, I was unable to squeeze it into my itinerary this time, hence, it would have to wait for my next trip then!
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| Mountains and plains |
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| Awesome view from the train |
My 3pm train took me 4 hours to reach Lanzhou; I did not personally like Lanzhou as it was too cosmopolitan. The air smells of factory fumes, with cars honking everywhere and commuters marching all over the road. The initial hotel that I book does not accept foreigners (contrary to what it claimed online!) so I decided to spend some extra money to splurge in a 3 star hotel to pamper myself, before my trip to the wilderness of southern Gansu, which was one of the best experience in this trip!
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