There was no rest this morning as we decided to take a taxi to see the nearby Mogao Caves at 8am. Despite the fact that this is what most people come to Dunhuang to see and therefore be very expensive and inevitably swarming with Chinese tour groups we decided that this wasn't a good enough reason not to visit what are, simply put, quite the most interesting and fascinating of the Buddha Caves we've seen.

Apart from being a flourishing commercial centre, DUnhuang also became one of the first and also most important Buddhist centres when the religion came to CHina from India. These buddhist monks formed a community in DUnhuang at the convergence of the SIlk ROad and started to spread the religion. As wealthy traders came through they paid donations (as well as other local and newly converted buddhists) to the community in order to build these caves thereby hopefully giving them a safe and successful onward journey. The number of caves therefore grew quickly and were constantly added to, increasing to over 700 caves today.

Frustratingly you have to take a tour which only cover a random selection of 10 caves, but our guide ended up being very knowledgeable and pointed out plenty of Western influences creepeing into CHina from the trade along the SIlk Road, so I, at least, found it exciting. Of course a number of French, British and Russian explorers had "pillaged" the caves of many of their treasures and the CHinese anger at this was clearly on show during the tour!

We returned to Dunhuang for lunch with a couple of guys we'd met before heading off to the Western Thousand Buddha caves. Essentially these are on a similar scale to the MOgao caves except slightly less numerous and less well preserved. But the real pleasure was the fact that there was almost nobody else around, making for a much more pleasant tour. We also walked around the little oasis in the desert where the caves are located and up a spectacular river canyon - it flet as though all those people in CHina had simply disappeared and was almost heaven-like!