Long Road to Makit
Today was a long driving day in the bus; 12 hours, a few at stops but most of the day on the road. Our goal was the "small" town of Makit. That's small in Chinese terms, about 400,000 people.
Most of the drive was along the Taklamakan Desert. Flat, grey/tan soil with mountains on the north and south horizons.
We stopped at the Kezi'er Buddhist caves, located in a river valley, so there was some greenery around. These are the least known of the Buddhist Cave sites we visited.
The caves are pretty small. and no photos allowed inside. Here are a few reproductions of the murals from the small museum on site.
These are very early Buddhist Caves along the Silk Road, and the images have more of an Indian style.
In Makit, we visited the local museum, not very interesting, and a local museum of painting by the local farming community. Not bad for naive art, but not really noteworthy.
Locals performed some local music and dancing.
We ended the day visiting a tourist operation on the edge of the sand desert. We had our choice of riding camels, riding in a dune buggy, or walking through the dunes.
Having successfully avoided riding camels in the past, I kept my perfect record and did so today, too. I chose the dune buggy. Bud choice. The driver immediately gunned the engine, and we flew over dunes, down the other side to swales at the bottom, steeply around curves, etc. I mainly just held on and tried to avoid motion sickness. There was a fourth option, stay at the base, which I should have done. But we convinced the driver to have mercy and go somewhat slower on the return.
