Travelling along Northwest China's fabled silk Road I reached Dunhuang, in Gansu Province. A tiny oasis in an otherwise waterless desert it experiences summer temperatures over 40 deg C and winter as low as -26 deg C.

　　Dunhuang's history goes back a very long time as its many ancient remains, some dating from 121 BC, testify. During the Tang dynasty (618-907) it was called Shazhou or詓and district?- a phrase that perfectly describes the surrounding landscape. It is located at the mouth of the Hexi Corridor - the thin line of life between the high Tibetan Plateau to the south and the Gobi Desert to the north. To the west stretches the inhospitable wastes of the Taklimakin Desert. The early trade routes from the town escaped the extremes of that desert by going through either the northern Yumen Guan (fade Gate Pass? or the southerly Yang Guan (訮ass of the Sun?. The sight of those long lines of camel caravans carrying goods between China and western Asia must have been truly spectacular. For many years I wanted to experience this great desert.

　　Leaving the town shortly after dawn I walked past a small Taoist temple. I thought I was heading towards a mountain range. I quickly realised that what I was seeing were enormous sand dunes - the 250 metre high singing Sand Mountains?mingshashan), referred to by medieval traveller Marco Polo as the詒umbling sands?

　　At the end of the highway, I could have travelledsintosthe desert by camel. Dozens sat together, their drivers playing cards, waiting on custom. I opted to walk. I wanted to be on my own, to experience the silence and to climb the dunes. Everything was bathed in the ethereal light of the rising sun. Walking, at times breathless, in this treeless wilderness was a fantastic feeling. I was alone in this empty land, the Taklimakan. There was no sound apart from the crunch of my boots, no birds, no obvious signs of animals, just desert. Apart from Dunhuang there was no other hint of habitation in the vast sea of sand that extended to the far horizon. Yet, it was sinister - I knew that if I kept going in this unforgiving land would eventually consume me. Taklimakan means go in and you will not come out?

　　I climbed one ridge - it was more difficult than I had imagined. The sand so dry and the grains so polished and continually on the move that it was very difficult to find a solid foothold. My feet kept sliding backwards, although I didn't really sink in. The sand seemed much coarser than that found on the white empty beaches of my native Scotland. Eventually, I reached the crest of the ridge and stood in awe at the vista before me. Walls of sand rose hundreds of metres high. Great sweeping ridges joined up and climbed higher and higher. The crescents of these barchan-shaped dunes appeared as though straight out of a geography textbook.

　　I followed the ridge, one side started dropping steeply to the wide plain below. As the sun climbed in the cloudless sky my shadow spread across the sand. I watched it in fascination. For a moment I thought I was an early traveller discovering this wilderness for the first time. I was truce of the Gobi? Yes, a dream, but for those few moments on the sand ridges of Mingshashan it was real. I was alone in a vast sea of sand. I did not want to go back down. Eventually like a child I started jumping, sometimes rolling, down the slope. It was wonderful, so natural.

　　Once on the flat I walked along a track, which led to a tiny oasis, dwarfed by its sandy surroundings. Smoke rose from a mud-walled house hidden within a clump of trees. Outside a neighbouring Mongolian-style yurt (nomadic tent) - a woman attempted to brush sand away from the doorway. A horse and some camels were tethered nearby. Enterprising locals had constructed wooden stairs up some dunes - the idea being to climb to the top and slide down on boards, (tune surfing?.

　　A short walk took me to the amazing crescent Moon Lake?(yueyaquan). It was a natural pool. About 40 metres long and 6 metres wide and shaped like a crescent its mirror-calm water beautifully reflected the surrounding dunes. Apparently it was formed when a windstorm removed the overlying sand, so exposing the water concealed in underlying porous rocks.

　　Walking back from the lake I noticed attempts had being made to stabilise some of the dunes by fencing off and planting drought-resistant plants. Further on a solitary thorn tree grew out of the increasingly warm sand - no grass, no other vegetation just this one surviving tree. Some peasants appeared on a tractor, expressing surprise at meeting me walking alone in the desert. Most詔ourists?reached the lake by camel caravans It was hard to explain that for those brief moments at Mingshashan, I actually wanted to experience the loneliness and the solitude of that great wilderness.

　　Back in town I hired a bicycle and headed eastwards out of town. Along the highway farmers wearing straw hats or scarves against the unmerciful sun were picking cotton. Sheep grazed on scanty vegetation. Any traces of settlement quickly disappeared as the straight, well-made highway crossed salt flats and barren, gravely wastes - totally arid desert with a backdrop of the giant sand mountains. Occasionally, there were braided channels of dried rivers and evidence of recent flash floods - the area receives only three days annual precipitation due to its position in the rain-shadow of the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau and the proximity of some of the highest mountain ranges in the world.

　　The road led to the Mogao Caves (mogao ku) - regarded as the most impressive and best-kept examples of Buddhist cave art anywhere in China. The grottoes, 492 still exist, are setsintosdesert cliffs above a normally dry river. They date back to 366 AD and the ten centuries following when Dunhuang was a flourishing centre of Buddhist culture on the Silk Road.

　　Tall slender trees fed from irrigation channels shaded the highly weathered cliff. A guide escorted me along a lofty series of external wooden balconies, walkways and ladders to the rectangular-shaped grottoes containing frescoes, carvings and statues of the Buddha. Some of the woodwork was up to 1000 years old - survival aided by the dry atmosphere. In an enormous cave, excavated right up to the top of the cliff was a giant sitting Buddha?about 31 metres high. Most caves were kept locked to preserve against any further human?deterioration. Incredibly in the 1920's, 400 White Russian soldiers from Siberia found refuge in them and soot from their campfires can still be seen. British and German archaeologists extensively plundered the grottoes at the beginning of this century.

　　Beyond Mogao I ventured againsintosthe desert. The underlying surface was crunchy, compacted gravel. In the heat I sweated my way to the crest of a small hill overlooking the valley containing the grottoes. I looked down on the striking contrast of a thin line of green in a scene of yellowish aridity. The vegetation disappearedswheresthe valley opened out so allowing water to evaporate or sinksintosthe sand. The whiteness of much of the ground produced local mirages. Highly weathered remains of Buddhist stuppas (small pagodas) were gradually crumbling backsintosthe ground. The land gave way to a gentle depression,swheresseveral grave mounds occupied a low rise beyond which the desert climbed in a great sweep up to a dark, rocky mountain range. The more I movedsintosthe wilderness, the more I became aware of the stillness, the silence and the emptiness of the desert.

　　Next day I left Dunhuang by bus passing the Sunday market, more cotton fields and outsintosthe desert. For part of the way, the weathered remains of the ancient Han Great Wall lay on the left. Several times I saw herds of wandering camels. Occasionally there were tiny oasis settlements but usually only emptiness. The road was excellent - Dunhuang's link with the Lanzhou-Urumqi Railway, and, vital for oil development as well as tourism. A link with civilisation, and the rest of China it was built up above large ditches as a protection against possible flash floods and to prevent the build up of sand drifts.

　　A rest stop of fifteen minutes gave me the opportunity to climb a conical hill. Looking back, the bus sitting on that long black line of highway seemed the only sign of life in a vast, lunar-like land of red and grey gravel. A hauntingly beautiful landscape. I imagined I could see forever - the dry air and the blue cloudless sky allowed incredible visibility towards distant mountains (beishan) maybe 100 kilometres away. This indeed was?Big Sky Country The silence was broken only by the bark of a road worker's dog and the occasional truck heading back to Dunhuang.

　　Shortly after I arrived at the little railway settlement of Liuyuan. Waiting in a small cafe I thought for a long time of Dunhuang and the emptiness of the Taklimakin. That evening I boarded the train for Turpan, the second lowest place on earth.