Dunhuang, an oasis of painted caves

Dunhuang was the last watering place before the Taklamakan, the junction where the northern and southern Silk Road branches split, and every caravan, monk and envoy who crossed here left something behind. Most of it ended up in the Mogao Caves, a cliff honeycombed with 735 grottoes cut between the fourth and fourteenth centuries. Around 492 are painted, holding some 45,000 square metres of murals: Tang bodhisattvas in flowing ribbons, apsaras trailing scarves across the ceilings, Sogdian merchants, Indian jataka tales and a nine-storey pavilion sheltering a 35-metre seated Buddha.

The caves also produced one of the great archive discoveries. In 1900 a Daoist caretaker, Wang Yuanlu, opened a sealed chamber, now known as Library Cave 17, packed with more than fifty thousand manuscripts in Chinese, Tibetan, Sanskrit, Sogdian and Uyghur, including the printed Diamond Sutra of 868. Most were carried off to London, Paris and Saint Petersburg; the Dunhuang Academy has spent decades documenting and conserving what remains, and visits are guided, ticketed in advance and rotated between caves.

Outside town the desert takes over. Mingsha Shan, the Singing Sand Dunes, hums when the wind moves the grains, and at their foot the crescent-shaped spring of Yueyaquan has held water for two thousand years. Ride a camel up for sunset, then head west to the tamped-earth ruins of the Jade Gate and Yangguan, the Han Great Wall's western end, and the wind-sculpted ridges of the Yardang badlands. Eat donkey-meat yellow noodles at the night market and let Dunhuang anchor the Silk Road leg of your journey across China.