Adventure Silk Road

Thirteen days along the Chinese Silk Road from Xi’an, following the trade route west towards central Asia. It is a historical corridor rather than a scenic loop, and the sites along it are extraordinary.

Xi’an was the eastern terminus of the Silk Road and holds the Terracotta Army, some eight thousand individually modelled figures buried to guard an emperor’s tomb for more than two thousand years and only rediscovered in 1974. Liuba follows, then Tianshui by way of the Maijishan grottoes, where Buddhas are carved into a cliff face.

Yeliguan comes next, then Xiahe and the Labrang monastery, one of the largest Tibetan Buddhist institutions outside Tibet itself. A rest day at Qinghai Lake follows, the biggest lake in China at over three thousand metres, reached across the Laji Pass at 3,820 metres. Then Zhangye Danxia, where the sandstone is banded in reds, oranges and yellows in a way that looks artificial, and Jiayuguan, the fortress that marked the westernmost gate of the Great Wall and the edge of imperial China.

The trip finishes at Dunhuang, and the optional extra day there is worth taking: the Mogao Caves hold almost five hundred painted Buddhist grottoes cut over a thousand years, and there are camel rides among three hundred metre dunes and the spring-fed Crescent Lake. Edelweiss include a choice of CFMoto motorcycle, a Chinese marque rather than the usual BMW, along with twelve nights in comfortable middle-range hotels, a guide and a tour book. This is a one-way tour between Xi’an and Dunhuang, and international flights and the Dunhuang extension are both separate. Prices are per person for 2026.