Gobi-smacked

I crossed the Gobi today. Well, a bit of it. In a car. And I wasn't driving (thank goodness: I don't think I'd survive that experience).

This is Jiaohe. A very old place (near Turpan). It's a clay city, once housing 10,000 people and is stunning, an absolute marvel

The centre piece of the Forest of pagodas (actually they are called something else, but tha's what the guide told me and I can't remember the correct word offhand: look it up).

The view down the main street from the temple (see below)

Big temple.

It was abandoned when Genghis Khan reared his ugly head. Despite this city being surrounded by gorges, it just wouldn't have been enough.
The Flaming Mountain. From Journey to the West (The Monkey King)

The thousand buddha caves near there. Massively defaced by historians and cultural cleansing, these are still beautiful

The river that flows through. It's a desert, so it is seriously dry. Duh. The irrigation system (Keriz) in Turpan is worthy of a column on its own. They dug a series of wells and climbed down to join them into an underground tunnel at a slightly less steep gradient than the hillside. This effectively set up an underground stream which spings forth down near the town. Fascinating, and gawd knows how they worked it out!