Visit the Yardang Devil City in summer, a niche spectacle, the West Sea Fleet

Drive about 90 kilometers north from Dunhuang City, and it takes a little over an hour to reach the famous Yumen Pass. The road entering the Western Regions through Yumen Pass is known as the Northern Silk Road, where the spring breeze fails to pass Yumen Pass. Continue westward along the ancient Silk Road and Shule River Valley for about 90 kilometers from Yumen Pass, and you will arrive at the Dunhuang Yardang Geopark. Yardang landforms, geological wonders carved by nature over millions of years, mean 'small hills with steep walls'. They are natural masterpieces created by the combined action of wind and water erosion, hidden deep in the lifeless desert Gobi, and are a very remote natural wonder within the territory of Dunhuang City. Dunhuang Yardang National Geopark is not on the main traffic route. The road to Yardang is a 'dead end', and you must return the same way after arriving, so it is a less-visited niche tourist attraction. Thousands of miles of red wilderness, uninhabited, with bizarre rocks on both sides of the road, as if you have arrived on an alien planet. There are no gas stations on the round trip from Dunhuang City, so you must fill up the car with gas before departing, otherwise, it is easy to break down on the road. Dunhuang Yardang National Geopark is located in a dried-up riverbed area, about 25 kilometers long from east to west and one or two kilometers wide from north to south. It is precisely because of the combined action of flowing water and wind that Yardangs are densely distributed, with hills standing tall, various in shape, and magnificent in momentum. Unique Yardangs stand on the vast expanse of the desert sea, a grand visual feast, like a group of whales swimming in the ocean, or a fleet lined up and ready to set sail, mighty and overwhelming. Therefore, people have given this area of Yardangs a special name: the West Sea Fleet. This place was once a river with abundant water, but as time passed, the flowing water has disappeared without a trace, and the changes of nature are mysterious and unpredictable. Rainwater erosion and wind-sand erosion, after a long time, have formed what we see today as the 'solid state of wind and water': Yardangs. They say that everyone is a Yardang, just sculpted by time into different shapes. If you wait until sunset, you can enjoy the dusk of an alien planet, with a hazy yellow tone under the raging wind and sand, making the world seem even more vast, extreme, apocalyptic, and desolate. As night falls, the sharp winds are blocked by the Yardang bodies, emitting terrifying howls, like the roar of tens of thousands of wild beasts, or the screams of devils, making one's hair stand on end, hence it is also known as Dunhuang's Devil City. The vast desert Gobi, boundless and vast, how small humans are in front of nature, Dunhuang Yardang Geopark, located on the eastern edge of Lop Nur, continue westward through the desert to enter Lop Nur. The world's attention-grabbing mysterious place, Lop Nur, is also a forbidden zone for life, known as the Sea of Death. Lop Nur does not allow tourists to enter, and if you enter illegally and are discovered by patrols, you will be detained and fined. Next to Dunhuang Yardang Geopark, the 'Dunhuang Yardang Police Station' is known as China's 'loneliest' police station. In 2001, when the Yardang Police Station was established, there was only one tent. Later, by hand drilling, China's only cave-like police station was carved out of the Yardang rock body. If you want to continue westward to Lop Nur, you must undergo strict inspection, and foreign self-driving tourists will be stopped from continuing and must return to Dunhuang, which is the way to go. On July 22, 2023, an off-road vehicle team from Sichuan, led by Gansu residents Jia Ning and Duan, with a total of 9 off-road vehicles, set off from Dunhuang City, bypassed the public security checkpoint, entered the national-level Wild Camel Nature Reserve in Ruoqiang County, Bayingolin Mongol Autonomous Prefecture, Xinjiang, from Aksai County, Jiuquan City, and crossed Lop Nur from south to north. On July 24, during refueling, diesel was mistakenly added to the Toyota Land Cruiser and Dodge Ram petrol vehicles, resulting in the unfortunate deaths of four people, including a male and a female, who were the boss of a company and his mistress. To the north of Dunhuang Yardang Geopark is the Xinjiang Hami Yardang Sea Route, which gathers ancient castles, beacon towers, post stations, prehistoric human sites, fossil mountains, mirages, desert wild camels, and many rare natural landscapes along the way. In recent years, it has become a long-distance travel destination and is the only uninhabited area in China that can be legally crossed. However, there is no way from Dunhuang Yardang to the Xinjiang Hami Yardang Sea Route, and you must return to Dunhuang and take a detour. Dunhuang Yardang Geopark, precisely because it is located in a traffic dead end, therefore has few visitors. Many tourists who have been to Dunhuang do not know that there is a Yardang Devil City in Dunhuang. The meaning of travel is to see what others have not seen, and it is worth spending time on the road admiring the scenery!