{"id":1587,"date":"2017-05-17T13:44:46","date_gmt":"2017-05-17T13:44:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mak.iqt.com.au\/?p=1587"},"modified":"2017-05-17T13:44:46","modified_gmt":"2017-05-17T13:44:46","slug":"15th-may-xian-to-tianshui-via-maiji-mountain","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mak.iqt.com.au\/?p=1587","title":{"rendered":"15th May – Xi’an to Tianshui via Maiji Mountain"},"content":{"rendered":"

On the drive out of Xi\u2019an we stop at a monument to the Silk Road that marks the starting point.\u00a0 The monument is quite large and depicts camels and people of different ethnic groups. This is a great place to officially start our Silk Road driving adventure.<\/p>\n

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Driving out of Xi’an we have an MG3 next to us in the traffic.<\/p>\n

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We have 340 km to drive to Maiji Mountain & the Maijishan Grottoes, which is a cave temple complex that has huge buddhas carved on the cliff face.\u00a0 We are once again into a mountainous area and pass through many tunnels, one of them 12 kilometres long.<\/p>\n

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We have to drive through some small villages to get to the Maijishan Grottoes.<\/p>\n

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The Maijishan Grottoes cave complex was first established between 384 \u2013 417 AD and its history spans more than 1,600 years. There are 221 caves and more than 7,800 sculptures and many murals.<\/p>\n

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There was some restoration work done in the Ming dynasty (1368 – 1644) and some of the colours on the statues is still in very good condition.<\/p>\n

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The paintings on the ceiling are original and they are in excellent condition.<\/p>\n

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There are a series of concrete walkways precariously hanging off the side of the cliff, to connect all the caves, that we walk along.<\/p>\n

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The views out over the mountains are magnificent.<\/p>\n

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On the walk back down to the car park a few of us buy a fan from a lady who is painting them.<\/p>\n

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Tonight we eat in a local restaurant and have traditional food of the Gansu province which is delicious.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On the drive out of Xi\u2019an we stop at a monument to the Silk Road that marks the starting point.\u00a0 The monument is quite large […]<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1593,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"footnotes":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/mak.iqt.com.au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/05\/DSC03884.jpg?fit=3648%2C2736&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p8qvHY-pB","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mak.iqt.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1587"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mak.iqt.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mak.iqt.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mak.iqt.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mak.iqt.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1587"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/mak.iqt.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1587\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1625,"href":"https:\/\/mak.iqt.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1587\/revisions\/1625"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mak.iqt.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1593"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mak.iqt.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1587"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mak.iqt.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1587"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mak.iqt.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1587"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}