Mati Si 马蹄寺: a day trip from Zhangye
Gansu Province 甘肃省
Click here for Zhangye & Danxia Landforms Geology Park
Mati Si: The Horse Hoof Monastery: Getting There
Mati Si: The Horse Hoof Monastery is a great day trip from Zhangye. Here is a diary account of our trip.
Once we’ve passed Zhangye’s outskirts, where a whole forest of gleaming highrises is springing up, and have negotiated the chaos of smallish lorries, pick-ups, tractors and loaded carts that convert the narrow, two-lane road out of town into such a nightmare, we can begin to enjoy the scenery.
Bucolic Landscape
An initial rural stretch of fields, haystacks and little mud-brick farms descends into a dry, dusty bowl, after which the ground starts rising again and the land becomes fertile once more. A huge mountain range comes into view on our right and, to our amazement, we see that some of the peaks are covered in snow!
This is, of course, the Qian lian range in the foothills of which the temples of Mati Si can be found, and the people of the Yugur (Yugu) minority.
Continue reading “Mati Si: The Horse Hoof Monastery”