We started our long journey west following the Silk Road across China on a very comfortable train ride from Xining to our first stop, Zhangye. This was our first high-speed train in China and definitely the nicest train we have been on so far this trip. It was a D class train which is the second fastest class of train in China capable of travelling around 200-250 km/h. It was only a quick two hour journey but we travelled over 340km.

That morning was spent exploring the lowkey streets of Zhangye. The public workout spaces in China are incredible, they are like a fully equipped gym with hundreds of different workout machines all free to use. We were walking around in the heat of the day, but even so there were still people doing a workout. I’m sure it would be absolutely packed in the mornings and evenings. We were saying how this kind of thing wouldn’t be possible in the US or in New Zealand as all the equipment would get destroyed in no time.

There was a famous 1000 year old Buddhist temple known as Dafo Temple. It is home to an enormous reclining Buddha statue. It was interesting seeing the Chinese influence on Buddhism here, with noticeably different styles of architecture and painting. The statue was very impressive, being around 35 metres long, and surrounded by statues of Boddhivastas.

The main attraction in Zhangye is the famous Rainbow Mountains which are about an hour's drive out of the city. We arranged for a driver through our hostel and a vanload of us headed there that afternoon for sunset. We made friends with a lovely girl called Bing from Hong Kong. She was on a week-long holiday in mainland China and was actually following a similar route to us, so we would be able to see her in some of our next destinations! We had no idea what we were getting into and it was only once we arrived at the ticket office megacomplex (the building itself would be similar in size to many New Zealand airports) when we started to realise what we were in for. The carpark was enormous and so were the crowds of mostly domestic tourists. We managed to get our tickets pretty easily and were soon on a bus from the ticket office to the first sightseeing stop. The systems in place here were outstanding, there were hundreds of buses looping around the national park dropping tourists at each site and picking up more. There were people whose job it was to organise the queues, much like a ski liftie at a busy ski field, and the buses were all full. Everything was working surprisingly smoothly considering the huge crowds and people were queuing in an orderly and calm manner. Given the crazy amount of people here we really didn’t have to wait in queues for long.

So what was all the madness about? Well the mountains are very beautiful and I can see why so many people flock here. Also we were there during the Chinese summer holidays at sunset which definitely contributed! However it was still a real shock for us to see so many tourists on a random weekday. We later learnt that China has a tourist attraction rating system which uses a five-tier scale, from A (lowest) to 5A (highest), to evaluate and categorize tourist sites in China. The mountains are ranked 5A, the same as the Forbidden City and Terracotta Warriors and makes it a major drawcard for Chinese people.

Bing was an excellent photographer and took some amazing photos of us. She was rather unimpressed by our boring camera poses and gave us some new ones to try. Being tall was a big benefit here as we could hold up our phone and camera to take pictures above everyone's heads. We met a lovely German couple called Felix and Franzi who were the only other foreigners we saw the entire time. They were on a road trip from Shenzhen (near Hong Kong) where they are living and studying their masters. As fate would have it they were also following the Silk Road but in a rental car instead. We were collecting a group of friends all following the same route West through China, and were very excited to see the landscape begin to change as we entered the Gobi desert at our next stop, Jiayuguan.