The Dragon Head Mountains


Today we got 25 km closer to Shandan. This is the next place where we will find a continuous stretch of the Great Wall again. We are looking forward to getting there as we have heard a rumour that the place is famous for its horse markets. Shandan used to supply the military with horses and was one of the largest and most important res-horses in China!!.

The weather was really grey yesterday, but after some more rain during the night we have had blue skies today. We had a great view of the Dragon Head Mountain range to the north. Some of these snow capped mountains are more than 3.600 metres high, and taking into consideration that we were at about 1.500 metres, it is an impressive sight.

In ancient times, the Chinese would name mountains according to their appearance. Some would end up as sleeping dragons under the mountains. When there was an earthquake, it could be explained – it was the dragons moving under the mountain. In fact, in the art of drawing maps it was often more important that the dragons features were well preserved than that the map was flawless, geographically speaking.

We walked along small dirt roads again for about the first half of the day. Then we followed a small road heading for Shandan. We had some meat and vegetable noodles for lunch. Jon got talking to the guy that ran the business, and he was well informed about many things. He asked Jon if he could show him some money from Europe.  Jon showed him a 5 Euro note. He told us that it had been a good day on the stock market today and that the oil was now selling at $67 a barrel. We were impressed. After all, we were sitting in a very small restaurant situated between Zhangye and Shandan.

Towards the end of the day, we came to a line of 5 beacon towers that stretched between the mountain range and the road. There were even small bits of the Great Wall there and remnants of an old fortress.