Tuesday, August 19, 2008

Thousand Buddha Caves

The visit to DunHuang, Gansu Province is incomplete without visiting the famous Mogao Crottoes 莫高窟 (also known as Thousand Buddha Caves). Mogao Grottoes is the world largest, well preserved treasure house of Buddhist arts, paintings, scriptures and murals. It is listed as one of the UNESCO World Heritage in 1987.
The surrounding area of Mogao Grottoes . The background is part of the Mt Mingsha.
Resembles a gigantic bell :P
Sorry leh, i dunno what is the name...
Guess what? This is once a river, which had dried up due to the hot weather...
The Big Arch. Entrance to Mogao Grottoes.
The FeiTian statue (飞天) welcomes us near the entrance area :)
Distracted by the flower.. since this is the first time I see such plant bears flowers :P
Sketch map for those blur sotongs the tourists.
The Thousand-Buddha Caves has so many caves rooms.. Today, 492 caves remains.
Finally... the Mogao Crottoes/莫高窟 (or Thousand Buddha Caves). The inner walls of all the caves are decorated with dignified Buddhist art in the form of paintings, murals, scriptures & statues. Only few "caves" are opened for public/tourists each day.
I will stop here since we are not allowed to take photos inside the caves. :P

11 comments:

Anonymous said...

DunHuang, the name itself sounds so mystical.

Furkids in Hong Kong™ said...

Really envy you being able to go to part of the Silk Road.

Are these the caves that are right on the fringe of the desert? If so, I remember reading somewhere that soon the caves will be covered by the desert. Or am I mistaken?

Beautiful place, and definitely one that I hope to visit when possible.

Mediviron UOA Clinic said...

the good thing about small lil' compact cameras are that u can curi2 try to take photos at forbidden places. just quickly snap then stow it away. if u're caught, feign ignorance!

Anonymous said...

pura pura make phone call then snap snap snap snap snap loh

Doreen said...

I thought they were sand castles when I saw the first pics. LOL

Chen said...

cc,
And I like the name in Chinese character : 敦煌 :)

furkids,
Hopefully u can pay a visit to Silk Road some day in the future too. :)

The Mt Mingsha Desert is located not far away from the Thousand Buddha Caves. But I dunno regarding the latter :)

chen,
Hehehe, I had a small little compact camera with me too (cos most of the time, i will bring 2 cameras with me when i go traveling). But, well.. the pictures inside the caves are readily available on books and postcards, and on internet too. :)

Chen said...

JL,
Hahaha, I'm not that desperate yet leh. Furthermore it's quite dark inside the caves.

One good thing is that the pictures inside the caves are readily available from the travel books and postcards, and not forgetting internet :)

Normally I will buy few photo books from the places I visited. This particular Silk Road tour, we bought 4 books back home :)

Doreen,
I look back at the photos again after seeing your comment. Hahahahaa, indeed there are resemblances :P

mistipurple said...

the caves form part of the building is it? looks like mountain and rocks all joining at the building. so awesome.

rainbow angeles said...

i wanna work as a tourist!! winn can be the boss... ;P

khengsiong said...

How come there are huge power lines over the Mt Mingsha? (-_-")

Chen said...

misti,
yeah yeah yeah..
u r right
Misti very pandai :)

angeles,
Hehehe, tourist is the best job :)
Let's all apply and become tourist
And Winn can become our NaWinngator :D

khengsiong,
Cos.. the citizens there need power supply? :D