Dunhuang

Our trip has been fairly quick so far. These horses definitely have earned their name in my book. We have made it to Dunhuang in just 70 days, saving us almost 3 weeks of time. It is very cold up here though. It is already March but the temperatures are quite low, around 30 degrees Fahrenheit. When we arrived in Dunhuang, the first thing we did was find a tavern with a fireplace to get warmed up in. Luckily while we were warming ourselves by the fire, we met a coat merchant. He sold us some of the "Best coats in all of Asia." I will admit they did make me quite toasty inside. We were surprised and also disgusted when we learned from some papers left behind by the explorer Marco Polo that, "when a woman's husband leaves her to go on a journey of more than 20 days, as soon as he has left, she takes another husband, and this she is fully entitled to do by local usage. And the men, wherever they go, take wives in the same way." This was nothing like back at home where you took one woman and stayed with her for life, unless, of course, you had her killed like King Henry in England. We rested in Dunhuang for a few days before we were to journey past and around the great Taklamakan desert. While in Dunhuang we also sold off the paper we were carrying for a small profit because it was to be sent somewhere away from where we were heading. Our horses enjoyed the time relaxing and we fed them well in town. I hope they appreciated it. We were not worried though since we had already conquered the much larger and much scarier Saharan Desert. Along the way we would stop at Khotan to resupply and sell some of our goods before continuing onward to the Mediterranean.