Wednesday, June 18th – Saturday, June 21st, 2025
World Tour Days 228 – 231
Much like our previous travel days in China, our day started and ended with high speed trains. After traveling over 10 hours on 2 trains we made it all the way from Beijing to Zhangye. We were completely exhausted after arriving. The town seemed like a ghost town with the entire area around our hotel being shut down. Each store was closed and cleared out. We wondered if it was the off season, if the stores were new, or if tourism had crashed in the area. This town was on the silk road, so there were camel statues everywhere.
The next morning we got a taxi to the Zhangye Danxia National Geopark. To get to the entrance we had to walk through many open stalls selling various western themed attire. We were not expecting so much American influenced cowboy gear, but loved to see it in western China. There was a school group that had not seen many western tourists before based on their reactions to seeing Nick and I. They were so adorable, gasping, smiling, waving. One little boy even said, “A white boy!”. The park was gorgeous, and there were more people excited to see us. There were also ‘sexy desert’ costumes for photo shoots; people will dress up for a photo shoot anywhere in China!
The park did not have any hiking trails, but there was a bus that drove around to all of the scenic viewpoints. There was often a short boardwalk and some food or souvenir shops at each stop. There were various rock formations, some more rainbow than others. Overall we were impressed with how many colors there were, though. We also enjoyed the rainbow rock themed ice cream, which was strawberry, mango, matcha, and milk flavored mixed on one cone. There was a park security guard who asked where we were from. I replied Canada and he quickly showed us a photo of Ryan Reynolds on his phone and said he was a good Canadian.
The rainbow mountains were our last real activity in China. It was bittersweet. After that we took a train to Ürümqi, which took around 7 hours and had great views of wind turbines. That was then the most west we would be in China. There were some parks there, but it was not great weather so we mostly stayed inside. Ürümqi was just our launching point from where we would fly to our next country, Kazakhstan. Our 39 days in China had come to an end and it was absolutely incredible. I’ll admit I was excited to be making our way back west; there is something nice about traveling where things are more familiar, whether it’s food or how to get around. That being said, traveling in China went much smoother than we were anticipating and we’d recommend it to our friends and family.
