The Qinghai–Gansu
Grand Route

The Grand Route is the most spectacular road trip in China and, oddly, one of the least travelled by English-speaking visitors. It brings together four things that rarely appear at the same time: extreme landscape, first-rate history, moderate altitude and genuinely good roads.

We drive it clockwise from Xining, with a private car and driver and an English-speaking guide. The vehicle carries oxygen on board and the climb is gradual: you go from 1,139 m to 3,194 m over several days, not in one jump.

What you see, in order

The route follows a geographic logic worth respecting. This is how we run it:

• Xining — Kumbum Monastery and a day of acclimatisation (2,275 m).
• Qinghai Lake — China's largest saltwater lake, with yak-herder camps on the shore (3,194 m).
• Chaka Salt Lake — the mirror of the sky, at its best at sunrise (3,059 m).
• Dachaidan Emerald Lake — old borax mines, water an impossible green (3,170 m).
• The yardangs on the water — sandstone ridges rising straight out of a salt lake (2,700 m).
• Dunhuang — the Mogao Caves and the Mingsha dunes (1,139 m).
• Jiayuguan — the western end of the Great Wall (1,620 m).
• Zhangye Danxia — the rainbow mountains (1,480 m).
• Qilian — high grassland, and back to Xining (2,800 m).

Why we drive it clockwise

For the light and for the altitude. Clockwise, you reach Dunhuang at the end of the first half of the trip, already acclimatised and with the dunes lit by late-afternoon sun. It also puts the Chaka and Dachaidan viewpoints in the early morning, before the coach parties that set out from Xining on day trips arrive.

Fitness level and altitude

This is not a trekking trip: you walk, but not far. The real factor is altitude, and we manage it with three rules — gradual ascent, nothing strenuous on day one, and oxygen in the vehicle. Most travellers notice only some tiredness and a mild headache on the first night.

When to go

June to September is the ideal window. In July the rapeseed fields of Menyuan turn the valleys yellow. In October the poplar forest at Ejina turns gold for exactly two weeks.