How to Get Around Gansu

High-speed rail now runs the length of the corridor, which has transformed travel here: Lanzhou to Zhangye in about three hours, and on to Jiayuguan and Dunhuang. What was a two-day train journey is now a comfortable day.

Getting in: Lanzhou has the main airport, with flights from across China; Dunhuang and Jiayuguan have smaller ones, which saves the corridor run if time is short.

Around Dunhuang: the caves, dunes and desert passes need a taxi or a hired car for the day; the sites are spread over tens of kilometres.

To Xiahe: buses from Lanzhou take four to five hours on a mountain road, climbing to the plateau. There is no railway.

Distances are long — the province is 1,600 kilometres end to end — and a corridor trip needs a week.