The Mogao Grottoes

Exhausted and likely dehydrated from our sand dune escapades we wiped the sweat from our brows and climbed back into the bus, which had become our home ,and we stopped for lunch before heading to our next stop, the Mogao Grottoes.

            The Grottoes or caves, which are also known as the “Caves of One Thousand Buddhas”, are a cave system in Dunhuang that contains over 700 different caves where peoples of ancient China used to reside. The oldest cave is dated at 366 BC and they were originally intended as places of worship for Buddhism. Some of the 700 or so caverns that have been excavated were not used for religious purposes and were instead the homes of monks and the rest of the general population at the time. 

 

            The caves are interesting because many different kinds of people have come through at different times and added their own touches to the caves. For example, although these are Buddhist caverns they discovered examples and depictions of Greek and Roman Gods and Goddesses in murals on the walls. These murals have increased our knowledge of the amount of western communication with China during these time periods.

            The coolest thing that we got to see in the caves was one of the giant Buddha statues. There are a lot of giant Buddha Statues around this world but this one is pretty cool because it is the third largest Buddha in the world and it is the largest indoor statue in the world. The caves are pretty well preserved because they don’t let any light into the caves at all, to see things you must use a flashlight. The only annoying thing is that most of the caves are closed to the public. Out of the 700 odd caves we only got to see about 10 on 2 hour long tour. 

            After our tour of the cave system we all grabbed some ice cream before we piled back on to the bus which would take us to meet our camels which would take us to our camping spot in the desert.