Dunhuang Revisited - A 5-Day Family Trip

It’s been four years since my last visit, and my daughter is finally old enough for a proper long-distance trip. The goal was to introduce her to the desert and Gobi, a landscape starkly different from the lush mountains and rivers of southern China.

Traveling with a kid raises the bar for transport and lodging. We narrowed it down to three well-established desert destinations: Mingsha Mountain in Dunhuang, Shapotou in Ningxia, and Xiangshawan in Inner Mongolia.

I’d been to Dunhuang before and written a detailed travelogue about it: Dunhuang Self-Drive 5 Days 4 Nights, covering all the main attractions.

Shapotou in Ningxia offers a unique combination of desert and the Yellow River.

Xiangshawan in Inner Mongolia is less scenic and more of a desert resort, but it’s commercially well-dev…