The last stretch of my long Asian odyssey included the
drives from Lanzhou to Xiahe and back and then onwards to Xian, all country I
also covered on my Silk Road trip in 2006 . Although the location was the same,
the journey changed immensely over the eight year period. In 2006 the road from
Lanzhou to Linxia was a winding two lane road through ridge top villages and
terraced paddy fields along the side of mountains – very slow going. In 2014
there was an expressway through the valley which also cut through the mountains
in a long tunnel. In 2006 most of the drive from Xian to Lanzhou via Pingliang
was on a slow two-lane highway crowded with hundreds of big slow-moving
coal-carrying trucks struggling to make it up the steep hills with their big
loads. In 2014 the journey was almost entirely on uncrowded toll expressways
that cut through the mountain ridges in tunnels rather than going over them.
Long distance road travel in China is now about as fast as in North America or
Europe.

The towns in this remote northwestern part of China have
changed greatly too. I vaguely recognized Linxia from eight years ago, partly
from the mostly Muslim Hui town’s central mosque. Then it seemed like a scruffy
low rise city, but in 2014 the outskirts were full of modern high rise
residential skyscrapers . Ditto for many of the other towns we passed along
route.

The expressway was either closed for construction or not yet
completed for one stretch over a pine-covered mountain range just west of
Pingliang, requiring a quite long detour on country roads, a change from plan
that was well worth the experience. He two hour detour on back roads was
through an old China of pine forests, hillside fields, whitewater streams, and
villages with almost no new construction and nothing built taller than two
stories on a cool sunny late afternoon.

As my travels in China are coming to a close, I thought I’d
mention another big change I noticed since my travels in the country in 2006
and 2007. China has become much more expensive for travelers than it used to
be. That’s not to say China is an especially expensive destination; it’s just
not the incredible bargain it was a few years ago. And it is possible to travel
relatively cheaply by using public transportation, staying in hostels, and
eating in more basic places . Foe me, though, everything seemed to cost about
twice as much as it did seven or eight years ago. Whereas in 2006 Dragoman was
using the top hotels in the center of cities like Xian and Pingliang, they are
now well out of the Dragoman kitty price range. Some of this is due to the Yuan’s
significant appreciation against the $USD over that time but most apparently to
inflation in tourist sectors of the economy that exceed China’s relatively low
inflation rate over that time. Anyway, don’t expect travel in China to be the
great deal it once was.