You сan never have too much Danxia (but Chinese traffic jams – you can)!

Everything must come to an end – and that included our China-2024 trip…

The final stop on our itinerary was Binggou Danxia Landform and Geopark – located about 12km from the famous rainbow-colored Zhangye Danxia mountains. The scenery here is totally different – not the undulating multicolored-stripe landscapes, but massive rock formations of all shapes and sizes spread out across a large area. You’ve got to hand it to Mother Nature’s geological design skills! ->

Massive bonus for us: there wasn’t a single other visitor in sight! Most tourists get drawn to the rather more famous – and conveniently located – rainbow mountains, leaving this place nearly empty. The visitor center and the area in front of it looked like this:

There are two hiking routes here – each taking around two hours to complete. Unfortunately, we didn’t have that much time, so we picked what seemed like the more scenic one:

Like I say – practically no other tourists:

We walked, took in the views, and enjoyed the scenery. Not bad at all!…

Check out the arch!…

Zoomed in ->

The views just kept getting more and more spectacular:

Absolutely stunning!

Perfect spot for some drone flying:

And that was a wrap! Our China-2024 sightseeing adventure was officially over!

The trip was packed with amazing places – but we still didn’t see everything. Example: about 200km from Zhangye lies the Badain Jaran Desert.

According to the internet, this desert has some of the largest sand dunes in the world – reaching up to 500 meters high! Yes – it’s already been added to the must-visit list for our next trip!…

(Photo from the web)

And finally, let’s take a moment to appreciate China’s road infrastructure. Even in these remote, sparsely-populated areas, the roads are top-notch, and all major towns are connected by new highways:

And the traffic? Practically nonexistent. Most of the time we were driving on practically empty roads:

However!…

On the last day the roads gave us a real headache. After all the stunning Danxia landscapes and rock formations, we still had 350km to go to reach Xining (from where we were to fly back home after an overnight stay). At first, the drive was smooth and enjoyable:

Then the highway ended (well, more like – it’s still under construction), and we had to switch to an old two-lane road.

Since this was the only direct route to Xining (a major city and the capital of Qinghai province), traffic got intense…

…Eventually coming to a complete stop:

Turns out, a truck had broken down up ahead on the mountain pass blocking one of the lanes. And here’s where things got very Chinese: tons of impatient drivers swerved into the oncoming lane, trying to squeeze past the jam – which, of course, resulted in total deadlock in both directions! ->

It took a couple of hours to sort out the mess, but we finally started moving again. Until – bam! Another jam. This time two trucks had collided under a bridge still under construction. And once again it was impatient drivers who’d blocked every possible escape route!

Then came the third jam (I don’t even remember the reason for this one). In total, we were stuck in traffic for seven or eight hours! Ugh. We crawled into Xining toward dawn! Talk about an unfortunate… rotten-cherry-on-top!

Still, in the grand scheme of things, it didn’t ruin the trip for us – nothing could have done that, for the whole journey was absolutely magical. Highly recommended to you all, dear readers – and to be followed up with a similar trip by moi & Co. in coming years – possibly even in this one!…

The rest of the photos from our China-2024 adventure are here.