China's Ancient Silk Road

With over 120,000 pieces on display, Shanghai Museum holds some of China’s finest cultural treasures, ranging from sumptuous Shang Bronzes to jade wine vessels from the Qing period and 7th century Sancai figures, as well as displays of priceless Ming ceramics. In Luoyang, the Six-Horses Carriage museum showcases recently discovered chariot burials dating from time of the Eastern Zhou (3rd century BC).

Later in the afternoon you’ll be driven half an hour east of town to the ancient White Horse Temple (‘Baima Si’), China’s oldest Buddhist monastery, whose prayer halls contain a host of treasures, including a five-foot-tall Buddha made of solid jade, and another dating from the Eastern Han period of the 3rd century AD.

Today you’ll visit the Shaolin Temple, which sits at the foot of sacred Mount Songshan. Renowned as the crucible of Kung Fu, it attracts students and martial arts fans from all over the world. Hundreds perform synchronized routines in mass practice sessions each day – one of the region’s most striking sights. Behind it, a cemetery known as the Forest of Pagodas stands as a memorial to 14 centuries of Kung Fu masters. Prominent among the monuments is the ancient Songyue Temple where the Empress Wu, the only woman to ever rule China, used to pray in the 7th century – a fabulously exotic spectacle against the mountain backdrop.

After an early breakfast, you’ll travel to the city’s outskirts to see one of the great landmarks of the ancient Silk Road. Dominated by a giant sitting Buddha, the Longmen Grottoes (5th century) occupy a glorious setting on the banks of the Yi River. Return to your hotel for lunch, then drive to the railway station, where you’ll catch a high-speed ‘G-Class’ train to Xi'an. Spend the evening exploring the atmospheric Muslim (‘Hui’) quarter, whose main street, Beiyuanmen, is lined with open kitchens serving an amazing array of traditional snacks and meals with a distinctly Central Asian flavour – a living legacy of the ancient trade across the great deserts to the west.

Begin your tour of the ancient Chinese capital with a bicycle tour of Xi'an’s impressive Ming ramparts, which extend for 9 miles (14km) around the centre. Next, pay a visit to the six-storey Wild Goose Pagoda, built to hold the precious Buddhist texts brought back from India by the monk Xuan Zang in the 7th century, and which was, in its day, the tallest building in the world. In the afternoon you’ll head east out of the city to see the Terracotta Army archaeological site. The complex includes the pits holding the clay warriors themselves, the giant mound encasing the unexcavated tomb of the Ching Emperor, and a museum jam-packed with precious finds.

A dramatic change of atmosphere marks the seventh day of your tour, as you fly from the modern metropolis of Xi'an to the wilds of Gansu. Huddled in a valley on the fringes of Tibet, Labarang Monastery forms a striking spectacle. The complex, founded in 1709, encloses six huge prayer halls and 18 temples, as well as hundreds of monks’ cells. Your guide will lead you to the upper level of the Gongtang Pagoda, whose terrace affords a superb view over the monastery, town and surrounding desert hills.

As soon as you hear the trumpets and drums emanating from the prayer halls in the early morning, you’ll want to climb the stone steps of the monastery again. Monks will probably be chanting and engaging in traditional theological debates in the courtyards. Superb views over the exotic building as its adjacent quarters are to be had from the ridges overlooking the town. Later, you’ll be offered a trip out to grasslands outside Xiahe, where you’ll have the chance to visit a nomad encampment, and taste the local delicacy: Tibetan yak butter tea.

Jiayuguan Fort dominates a spectacular valley, bounded by two snow-covered ridges, at what was in Ming times the most westerly outpost of civilization in the Chinese Empire. Originally built in 1372 at the narrowest point in the Hexi Corridor, it was recently reconstructed by the government, and looks essentially as it would have in the 14th century, its pagoda-roofed bastions formidable against their hinterland of desert ridges. Foremost among the citadel’s monuments is the Gate of Sighs, through which those expelled from ancient China would have walked into barbarian country and exile.

Dating from between the 4th and 14th centuries, the Mogao Caves complex is the world's richest storehouse of ancient Buddhist sculpture and murals. For hundreds of years, precious manuscripts from India and beyond (including the Diamond Sutra, the world’s oldest printed book) were also brought here by travelling monks and secreted in a sealed cave on the site, where Aurel Stein discovered them between 1907 and 1914, eventually carrying the horde off to the British Museum (where it still resides).

Created over a period of around 700 years, Dunhuang’s cave paintings decorate hundreds of separate excavations, although only the 20 most impressive are open to the public today. You’ll probably get through around 15 in your tour, which will also pause at the site’s state-of-the-art Research and Exhibition Centre, to look at the detailed facsimiles and displays on the history of the Silk Road.

Dunhuang’s ‘Crescent Moon Lake’ occupies a depression amid a tract of vast dunes outside the town. Visits are best in the evenings, when the crowds who come to climb the sand hills and enjoy toboggan and camel rides thin out considerably.

This atmospheric Uyghur oasis town of Turpan, on the northern Silk Road, lies at 30m below sea level, ensuring fiercely cold winters and scorching summers – perfect for growing fruit, notably grapes. A succession of large walled cities sprang up here over the centuries, whose eroded ruins may still be visited on the outskirts. Artefacts from these, including an impressive collection of mummies, are displayed at the town’s excellent museum, along with a superb array of dinosaur fossils. However, the most iconic sight in the area is the pot-bellied, round-topped Emin Minaret, which you can scale for a fine view of the surrounding snow peaks.

Start the day’s tour with a visit to the Bezeklik ‘Thousand Buddha Caves’ complex, and the fascinating Karez Irrigation Site, where you can see the system of channels by means of meltwater was diverted to the area from the Tian Shan mountain range more than 2,000 years ago. In the afternoon, you’ll experience the resulting fertility yourself with a tour of a local grape farm in the Uyghur village of Tuyoq. Located on the floor of spectacular canyon amid a spur of the ‘Flaming Mountains’, Tuyoq has for centuries been an important Muslim pilgrimage site thanks to the presence of its outskirts of a pair of tiny domed tombs, which you can also visit.

Located 6 miles (10km) outside Turpan, Jiaohe occupies a leaf-shaped plateau surrounded by cliffs, and although heavily eroded, retains its original street plan.

In the lap of the Tianshan mountains, Urumqi has been the region’s capital since the 19th century and is today a booming, modern city. Chief among its attractions is the Xinjiang Provincial Museum, in which a collection of well-preserved mummies excavated in cemeteries around the Tarim Basin takes pride of place. Intriguingly, some of the most ancient have fair hair and blue eyes!

Surrounded by snow peaks, pine forests and grassy meadows, Tian Chi (‘Heavenly Lake’) is exquisitely beautiful and offers a welcome respite from the relentless sand and scrub of the Tarim Basin. Its glacial turquoise colour contrasts vividly with the backdrop of 6,000-metre mountains, which include Bodga Feng. In summer the shores of the lake are frequented by nomadic Kazakh herders.

Although a rapidly modernizing city, Kashgar still feels incredibly remote and retains evocative vestiges of its mud-walled old town as well as numerous Islamic monuments dating from the 17th century, among them the green-tiled tomb of Abakh Khoja and some finely tiled mosques. Should you wish, your guide can also arrange for you to take tea with an Uyghur family in a traditional home to experience daily life in the city. Kashgar’s covered bazaar is not to be missed – look out for local Uyghur knives and musical instruments that would have been familiar to Tamerlane and Genghis Khan.

It’s time to bid farewell to this city at the western limits of the Tarim Basin. Flying back to Beijing, you’ll appreciate the vast distances and unforgiving terrain which the ancient Silk Road traders – and the explorers of the 19th and early 20th centuries who followed in their wake – had to tackle. Weather permitting, you’ll also have a grandstand view of the Karakorums, Kun Lun range and Tianshan Mountains – one of the world’s most astonishing natural spectacles.