Where China met the world — the whole Silk Road in one journey, Xi'an to Kashgar.
18 days, Shaanxi, Gansu & Ningxia, Xinjiang. Our longest format, for travellers who want the whole arc of a region rather than its highlights. Every departure is planned route by route, quoted in writing, and staffed by crews we employ ourselves.
Everything on the ground is ours: our own guides, our own vehicles, our own crews — not a chain of subcontracted hands. The plan is written and priced line by line before you pay a deposit, and the same person answers you from the first email to the day you fly home.
And because this runs three days or more, the bed comes with the journey: 17 nights included, in places we have slept in ourselves, the same room throughout, booked by us, in your name, itemised in your quote.
Trade and pilgrimage routes walked in short, real sections, with the story of what used to move along them.
The dynasties read in order as you move — what each age left standing, and why it still matters where you are standing.
Where the route is long, the fast train does the work: city centre to city centre, with the country running past the window.
Your party only, your dates, your pace — one guide and one vehicle throughout, never shared with strangers.
“Every old road was once the quickest way there was.”
Arrive, and take the city's measure
Day 1A private car and an English-speaking guide meet you at Xi'an Xianyang airport or the North railway station. Chang'an was the largest city on earth in the Tang century — a walled grid of a hundred and eight wards holding merchants from Samarkand to Baghdad — and the journey starts by taking its measure. Dinner is in the Muslim Quarter, a plate of cured beef eaten in a lane that has traded Central Asian goods for centuries, because the corridor you are about to follow begins at the table. Then an early night: eighteen days is a long arc, and the first one is for sleep.
The army that left, and the wall that stayed
Day 2East at opening to Lintong, into Pit One with a Qin-history specialist: not only the ranks, but the workshops, the logistics and the bureaucracy behind them — an army built to govern forever. Lunch in Lintong, then an hour back at the hotel to rest, because the day has a second act. At four o'clock you take the city wall by bike, westward into the sun: fourteen kilometres of Ming brick on Tang lines, the first challenge of the journey, at your own strength, with the sun setting ahead of you the whole way. Dinner is a Guanzhong table, and the pace is yours to set.
The mosque with a Chinese face
Day 3The first evidence of the meeting stands quietly in a city lane: the Great Mosque and the Huajue Lane quarter, with no dome and no minaret, but courtyards, pavilions and a timber prayer hall in the Chinese official idiom. Then the Shaanxi History Museum, Silk Road galleries first — Sogdian grooms, Bactrian camels, Persian silver — the receipts of a trade you are about to follow west, read here before you meet it on the ground. The Small Wild Goose Pagoda holds the other end of the same import: where the monk Yijing translated the sutras he carried home from India. In the evening the fast train takes you into Gansu, and the road begins.
The smile on the cliff
Day 4Out to Maijishan, where a hundred and ninety-four caves of clay sculpture hang on a cliff face and the walkway runs a hundred metres up it — about an hour of steps and platforms, with a low-level route for anyone who would rather stay near the ground. The 'Eastern Smile' of the small disciple figures sits almost at eye level, and it is the gentlest face on the whole journey. Lunch at the site, then the fast train on to Lanzhou, arriving in the evening on the Yellow River, where beef noodles are not a dish but a civic institution and dinner is a bowl of the real thing in the city that built it.
The corridor opens
Day 5The Gansu Provincial Museum in the morning, home of the Flying Horse of Gansu — the bronze that became the country's tourism emblem — and a whole Silk Road hall besides: post-rider bricks, Sogdian merchants, glass. It is the best single lecture on the line you are about to travel, delivered before you travel it. Lunch in Lanzhou, then the high-speed train west into the Hexi Corridor: Qilian snow on one side, desert on the other, the strip the Han garrisoned so that the road could exist at all. You reach Zhangye in the evening, for fish-shaped noodles and lamb rolls.
Two time scales
Day 6The Great Buddha Temple first: a Western Xia royal monastery holding the largest indoor reclining Buddha in Asia at thirty-four and a half metres, built by a dynasty that was itself a stack of civilisations. Lunch in Zhangye, then a deliberate rest at the hotel — the afternoon is saved for the light. In, after four, to the Rainbow Danxia, when the low sun turns the bands to gold and red: two hundred million years of sediment laid under two thousand years of history, both legible in the same hillside. Dinner back in town.
The full stop of the Great Wall
Day 7A short rail hop west to Jiayuguan, built in 1372 as the western end of the Ming wall. Climb the tower and look west: gobi, and beyond it, 'outside the pass' — the phrase that in Chinese poetry means exile, and which reads differently when you are standing in it. Lunch is Jiayuguan barbecue, and the afternoon is the Overhanging Wall, a forty-five-degree ridge section on Ming lines, climbed to a beacon at the top for a view back to the Qilian peaks. The second challenge of the journey, again at your own pace. One night here, bags barely unpacked.
Into the sand
Day 8Rail or private car west to Dunhuang, arriving after lunch. The hotel is yours for three nights — the caves, the west line and the dunes each get their own day, and nobody repacks until Day 11. Late afternoon goes to Mingsha Dunes and Crescent Lake: tickets held online, camels out along the ridge, the climb to the crest for sunset and the little lake coming alight at dusk. Then dinner at a table set in the sand, with wind and stars for side dishes — the desert as an evening place rather than a hardship.
Mogao, a core day
Day 9The caves, properly. First the digital centre and the two dome films — the required reading before the real thing. Then, with an Academy researcher, eight grottoes on a Class-A ticket: Northern Liang's western face, the Northern Wei ascetic line, Sui and Tang fullness, Xixia colour — four steps through the making of a Chinese image, told cave by cave. Lunch in Dunhuang and an hour's rest, then the Book House and the replica caves for the detail the morning could not hold. If you are here for the art, special caves can be added on site. The evening is the Shazhou night market, apricot-pit water and braised lamb.
West of the last beacon
Day 10The wildest day of the line. West on the gobi highway, about three hundred and sixty kilometres out and back: first Yumen Pass and its small Fangpan fort, a Han frontier post alone in the gravel, where 'the spring wind never crosses Yumen Pass' stops being a line of poetry and becomes a description of the weather. Lunch is a picnic from the car, because there is no restaurant out here. Then four-wheel drive through the wind-carved Yardang 'Ghost City', fleets of forms that the low sun gilds in the last hour, which is the reason we came. Back to Dunhuang by nightfall.
Over the Tianshan
Day 11A flight does what took a month: Dunhuang to Ürümqi, the Tianshan snowline out of the right-hand window, the pass the ancients died in crossed while seated. The car meets you and takes you down into the Turpan Depression, one of the lowest and hottest places in China, and then to Jiaohe at dusk — a city carved out of a plateau and abandoned for a thousand years, never rebuilt; the Jushi capital that Han and Xiongnu fought over for a century. Dinner under the grape trellises if the season allows, and the first of two nights in the depression.
The gift from Persia
Day 12The Karez wells first: two thousand kilometres of underground channel beneath the city, Persian technology and Uyghur mastery, and the entire reason grapes grow in a desert. Down there it is another season entirely. Then the Emin Minaret, Qing-era Uyghur royal architecture with Islamic geometry cut in Chinese brick. Lunch is with a Uyghur family — naan from the tandoor, polo, tea, and a dutar played across the table; guests, not an audience. The afternoon takes Bezeklik's caves or the Flaming Mountains lookout, depending on the season, and the second night in the depression comes early.
The oldest evidence
Day 13Back up to Ürümqi and the Xinjiang Regional Museum, for the Tarim mummies: three-thousand-year-old faces with unmistakably European features, buried beside the caravan road. The oldest and quietest exhibit on this journey's theme — no reconstruction, no argument, just people who were there. Lunch is big-plate chicken, and in the evening a flight south to Kashgar. The south begins at touchdown. Five nights by the old city, and the bags stay unpacked until departure day.
The living city
Day 14The old city opens in the morning and is walked with a local researcher — earthen houses, crossing bridges, hexagonal bricks that point the way home — as a living quarter rather than a set. Then the Id Kah Mosque, set deliberately against Xi'an's Great Mosque from Day 3: two buildings, two appearances, one faith learned into Chinese forms. Lunch is an old-town lamb pot with samsa. The afternoon goes to the craftsmen's street — coppersmiths, instrument makers, potters, third generation and older — where a metal-chasing workshop can be reserved, and then to the Abakh Hoja Tomb, Islamic funerary architecture under Chinese rooflines. In the evening, a private muqam recital, musicians close enough to talk to.
The permit morning, and the bazaar
Day 15A morning of paperwork, because the paperwork is part of the road. Foreign nationals must apply for the border-area travel permit in person with their passport at the designated Kashgar office; it is free, the window opens about half past ten, and we come with the forms prepared and allow one to two hours. Lunch, then a deliberately blank stretch before the plateau. Late afternoon is the China–West Asia international bazaar — dried fruit, atlas silk, Kashgar knives — and on Sundays the livestock market that is Central Asia's great market day. An early night, with oxygen and warm layers checked for tomorrow.
Up the Karakoram Highway and back
Day 16West on the Karakoram Highway at nine, and in four hours the landscape climbs two thousand three hundred metres — oasis, then gobi, then snowline, on a road Chinese and Pakistani crews cut through in the sixties and seventies. The Gez checkpoint first, where the permit is checked, then White Sand Lake, where dunes of wind-blown sand sit sunk in turquoise water and Kyrgyz yurts stand along the shore. Lunch at the lake, then Karakul at 3,600 metres: two hours with Muztagh Ata mirrored in the water, a slow walk, tea in a Kyrgyz family's yurt. Then back down, off the high ground before evening, and noodle soup in Kashgar at 1,290 metres. Sleep low.
The unhurried day
Day 17Pantuo City first, the Ban Chao memorial park — Ban Chao ran the Western Regions from Shule, this city, for thirty-one years, and 'never enter the tiger's den' is his line, spoken on this ground. Then the Kashgar regional museum: Han coins with Kharoshthi on them, Sasanian silver, Sogdian documents, every case a receipt of exchange. A home-style lunch of lamb pot, ququ dumplings and yogurt, and the first genuinely unhurried afternoon of the second week. The high-terrace houses, six hundred years of rebuilding on one cliff-top, then a pot of brick tea in the century-old teahouse, where old men sing and nobody performs. Farewell dinner is whole roast lamb and the last of the muqam.
Departure
Day 18A last hour of old-city morning light, and hot naan from the tandoor for breakfast if the flight allows. Then the transfer to Kashgar airport, onward via Ürümqi. From the walls of Chang'an to the lakes of the Pamirs: four passes, two cave systems and four ways of life — the whole story of where China met the world, walked once, end to end, and never the same way twice.
Walking distances and start times are anchors, not walls — your guide flexes each day to the weather, the crowds and your legs, and the order of sights may adjust for timed-entry slots and closures. Nothing repeats and nothing is retraced.
A private journey — your party only, your dates, your pace. Best in spring and autumn; runnable in every season with the hours re-arranged.
A private journey, priced per person on twin share at the level below. Three hotel levels and two guiding levels are available on the same days — the daily plan does not change with the bed. Tell us your dates and we will send the itemised version, usually within one working day.
Small hotels, courtyard conversions and heritage properties we have stayed in ourselves, chosen for position and quiet rather than for a lobby. All licensed to receive foreign guests.
The days do not change with the bed. Comfort is our standard level; Signature steps up to design and heritage houses; Luxury is each destination’s best address, with a view to match.
Breakfast daily, taxes and service, twin or double as you prefer, and the bags taken up while you are out. Tell us about a hard bed, a soft pillow or a room away from the street — it goes to the hotel before you arrive.
Plenty of our travellers arrive with points or a favourite address. Point us at it, we plan the days around your door, and the accommodation comes out of your quote — nothing else about the journey changes.
China’s major sites run on real-name, timed entry booked against your passport, and the best-known ones cap visitors daily and release slots only days ahead. Once your dates are fixed we book the whole sequence, hold the confirmations, and re-check every one of them the week you travel — you bring the passport and walk past the queue.
Museums and palaces close one day a week (usually Monday); if your dates land on it, we re-order the days and tell you before you book, never after.
For spring and autumn dates, 60–90 days ahead is comfortable — the best houses and the timed slots both go early. Shorter notice? Ask anyway: we hold a small allotment in most cities and can usually move quickly.
This route sits inside a family of longer and shorter versions — ask us and we will send the alternatives side by side, with the days that would come out or go in, and what each one costs.
China runs across five climate zones, so the right months depend on the route rather than the country. Spring and autumn suit almost all of our journeys; the far west and the plateau we run later in spring and earlier in autumn.
Our days are built in short legs, broken every few hundred metres by something to see and something to sit down for. Where there are steps there are landings, and the vehicle is never further than the next gate.
Water and wipes ride in the car; a flask in cold months, shade and a long lunch in hot ones. Tell us about knees, hips and small legs in advance — the days bend around the answer, not the other way round.
Stone slabs, temple steps and long village lanes — broken-in walking shoes are the single best thing in the bag.
Mornings and afternoons differ by ten degrees or more across most of the year; a layer you can stash beats a coat you must carry.
A hat, sunglasses and a compact umbrella cover almost every day of the year.
Every timed entry is matched to it by name — carry it, and leave the queueing to us.
The vehicle carries the rest and meets you at every stop — pack for the morning, not for the day.
Refills ride on board, and hot water is what the country drinks — a thermos makes you local by day two.
Alipay or WeChat Pay set up before you land; we send a two-page guide with the booking. Cards work in hotels, cash almost nowhere.
Nothing starts before nine — no dawn calls, no rushed breakfast. We book each site's quietest slot instead, and let the day run at a civilised pace.
Where China met the world — the whole Silk Road in one journey, Xi'an to Kashgar.
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