Silk Road Chinese New Year Tour 2027: Xi'an to Dunhuang

Morning
Your guide meets you at the arrivals hall with a name board, takes charge of your luggage and walks you to the vehicle. On the drive in, the guide lays out the shape of the next two weeks, which follows the old Silk Road westwards rather than jumping between unrelated cities.

Afternoon
Arrive at your hotel and check in, then a slow walk through the Tang West Market district to stretch your legs after the flight and to see the New Year decorations going up over the South Gate.

Evening
The reunion dinner on New Year's Eve, served at a Shaanxi restaurant, with the guide explaining the New Year customs you will meet across the four provinces on this route, from the reunion table in Xi'an to the family tent gatherings in Dunhuang.

Meals
Lunch, Dinner

Accommodation
Overnight at a 4-star hotel in Xi'an, on a twin-share basis, with breakfast included.

Morning
Walk the Ming dynasty City Wall at opening time, with your guide explaining how the 13.7-kilometre circuit was built in 1370 and why the wall was made wide enough for two carriages to pass.

Afternoon
The Terracotta Warriors and their excavation pit, two hours east of the city, where the guide walks you through the three pits in the order the army was meant to be seen.

Evening
The Chang'an lantern festival on the City Wall, where the narrative lantern groups are staged along the ramparts and Tang-style performances run continuously across the whole core section.

Meals
Breakfast, Lunch, Dinner

Accommodation
Overnight at a 4-star hotel in Xi'an, on a twin-share basis, with breakfast included.

Morning
A market morning in the city's food wholesale market, where your guide helps you choose the citrus, the paper and the dried goods that will go on a family table, and where the traders explain how New Year goods are bought and delivered.

Afternoon
A dumpling workshop with a local family, where you fold your own jiaozi at the table and learn the crescent fold meant to resemble the old round coin, followed by the Shaanxi History Museum and its gallery of Tang tomb finds.

Evening
Dinner at a courtyard restaurant near the South Gate, with a Tang-style music and dance performance, and a night walk through the Muslim Quarter's food lanes.

Meals
Breakfast, Lunch, Dinner

Accommodation
Overnight at a 4-star hotel in Xi'an, on a twin-share basis, with breakfast included.

Morning
After breakfast, transfer to Xi'an station for the high-speed rail to Luoyang, a journey of about ninety minutes. Your guide travels with you and settles the group's tickets for the segment.

Afternoon
Arrival in Luoyang and transfer to your hotel, then a walk over the Lijing Gate bridge into the old city, where the Spring Festival market has taken over the pedestrian streets with stalls of paper cuttings and sugar figures.

Evening
Dinner in the old city, where the guide introduces the Henan version of the family feast and the firecracker customs of the region, which are louder and run longer than in Xi'an.

Meals
Breakfast, Lunch, Dinner

Accommodation
Overnight at a 4-star hotel in Luoyang, on a twin-share basis, with breakfast included.

Morning
The Longmen Grottoes, with your guide working through the Fengxian Temple cliff face where the Tang dynasty carving of Vairocana Buddha was cut directly into the limestone over nineteen years.

Afternoon
The White Horse Temple, the first Buddhist monastery in China, where the guide explains how the translation teams carried sutras back from India along the same road you are following westwards this week.

Evening
The Luoyang Old City night market and its New Year lantern street, followed by a dinner of Henan broth and braised dishes.

Meals
Breakfast, Lunch, Dinner

Accommodation
Overnight at a 4-star hotel in Luoyang, on a twin-share basis, with breakfast included.

Morning
A morning in the Luoyang Museum's exhibition of ritual objects, where the guide shows you the bronze vessels used in the ancestor offerings that still structure the holiday.

Afternoon
A paper-cutting and calligraphy session in a local cultural center, where you write a New Year character in brush and cut a window pattern, and where the guide shows you the range of designs the region produces for the festival.

Evening
A lantern display along the Yi River and a dinner of Henan stew, with the guide's briefing on the long rail journey to Dunhuang that starts tomorrow.

Meals
Breakfast, Lunch, Dinner

Accommodation
Overnight at a 4-star hotel in Luoyang, on a twin-share basis, with breakfast included.

Morning
Check out and transfer to Luoyang station for the connection that will take you west. Your guide has pre-booked the group tickets and travels with you for the whole leg.

Afternoon
The rail journey runs out across the Loess Plateau and along the Hexi Corridor, with the Qilian Mountains to the north. The carriage becomes a travelling classroom as the guide uses the window scenery, the tunnel walls and the station boards to explain how the Silk Road route was surveyed and why it follows the mountain foot rather than the desert.

Evening
Arrival at Dunhuang station in the early evening and transfer to your hotel, with a short walk into the night market where the lantern festival's first installations are already lit along the river.

Meals
Breakfast, Lunch, Dinner

Accommodation
Overnight at a 4-star hotel in Dunhuang, on a twin-share basis, with breakfast included.

Morning
The Mogao Caves, with the timed entry your guide has arranged, moving through the painted caves with a specialist guide who explains the making of the murals and the thousand years of conservation work behind them.

Afternoon
The Crescent Spring and the Singing Sand dunes, where you walk the wooden walkway through the site, see the spring at the foot of the high dune, and ride a camel along the ridge. The guide explains how the sand here sings and why the water table has held steady for centuries.

Evening
The Dunhuang riverfront lantern festival, with the temple-style lantern installations lit along the water and a night market of regional snacks below them.

Meals
Breakfast, Lunch, Dinner

Accommodation
Overnight at a 4-star hotel in Dunhuang, on a twin-share basis, with breakfast included.

Morning
The Yangguan and Yumen Pass complex, where you receive a wooden pass document at the gate, clear the checkpoint reenactment, and take on the poetry challenge that puts the Tang poets' lines to the terrain that inspired them.

Afternoon
The Yadan national geopark, where you drive the dune tracks, try desert surfing, and see the wind-eroded stone forest that marks the old northern frontier. The guide sets out the Han dynasty garrison system that made this route possible.

Evening
A frontier dinner of lamb and cumin flatbread in the old town, followed by the Dunhuang museum's evening opening, where the guide shows you the manuscripts that travelled this road.

Meals
Breakfast, Lunch, Dinner

Accommodation
Overnight at a 4-star hotel in Dunhuang, on a twin-share basis, with breakfast included.

Morning
A craft morning at the Dunhuang mural art center, where you paint a small flying-apsara motif on a clay plaque to take home, working from the pigments the studio mixes on site.

Afternoon
A dawn walk out onto the dunes above the Crescent Spring, when the sand is still cold and the light is low, and then the folk parade through the old town, with its drum teams, yangge dancers and dragon-and-lion troupes.

Evening
A family dinner in a local courtyard, with the guide explaining how the desert communities mark the festival and why the firecrackers here go off at dawn rather than at midnight.

Meals
Breakfast, Lunch, Dinner

Accommodation
Overnight at a 4-star hotel in Dunhuang, on a twin-share basis, with breakfast included.

Morning
Check out and board the train east along the Hexi Corridor to Lanzhou, past Jiayuguan and the irrigation oases of the corridor. Your guide uses the two hours of changing landscape to trace how the corridor towns and their water systems were built.

Afternoon
Arrival at Lanzhou and transfer to your hotel, with an afternoon walk along the Yellow River and the Iron Bridge, where the guide sets out how the river shaped the city's grain trade.

Evening
A Lanzhou dinner of hand-pulled beef noodles, with the guide explaining the Hui Muslim noodle traditions that made Lanzhou a food city, and a lantern walk through the city center.

Meals
Breakfast, Lunch, Dinner

Accommodation
Overnight at a 4-star hotel in Lanzhou, on a twin-share basis, with breakfast included.

Morning
The Gansu Provincial Museum and its Silk Road gallery, where the guide shows you the pieces that travelled the corridor you crossed by rail yesterday.

Afternoon
A workshop at a local maker of the oil-and-flour pastry that Gansu families eat through the New Year period, where you shape and fry a batch of your own, and where the guide explains why the northern wheat pastry is unlike the southern rice cakes.

Evening
Dinner on the Yellow River banks, and a final lantern walk through the city center where the New Year displays are lit along the river.

Meals
Breakfast, Lunch, Dinner

Accommodation
Overnight at a 4-star hotel in Lanzhou, on a twin-share basis, with breakfast included.

Morning
Final time in the city, with your guide arranging any onward rail or flight bookings and seeing you off from the hotel.

Afternoon
Transfer to Lanzhou station or the airport for your onward journey, with the guide handling the luggage and staying until you are through to the departures hall.

Evening
Not used on the departure day

Meals
Breakfast

Accommodation
Overnight at a 4-star hotel in Departure day, no overnight, on a twin-share basis, with breakfast included.