Silk Road Photo Gallery - Tenggeli Desert

Zhongwei has a few desert-themed parks that offer a variety of experiences such as camel rides, sandboarding, and dune bashing.

Instead of going into a theme park for a few hours, I decided to stay overnight to experience both sunset and sunrise, as well as hoping to see some stars at night. There are many resort operators to choose from, although they tend to target domestic Chinese tourists and are not equipped to handle foreign tourists who don't speak Mandarin. They offer a diverse range of comforts from the basic tent with shared facilities to enclosed cabins with heating and private bathrooms. Expect the food on offer to be local and the offering a bit more simple.

I ended up in a resort just across the provincial border in Inner Mongolia about a half hour taxi ride from Zhongwei's south high-speed rail station. Taxis work with the resort operators, charging a flat fare of 60 yuan for a pre-booked pick-up from the train station.

Zhongwei is in the southwestern corner of Ningxia, about an hour from the provincial capital Yinchuan by high-speed train.