2 hours west of Yinchuan past the Ningxia boundary in Inner Mongolia is a desert landscape with stunningly colourful lakes just beyond the town of Alxa League. Our driver mentioned this is a fairly new attraction that just opened up in the past few years, and a bit off-the-beaten track. It's a full day trip and you will appreciate how beautiful this remote part of China can get.
Since these lakes are in the middle of the desert, you need to enter using 4x4 off-road vehicles to navigate the sand dunes. There are no roads within so an experienced driver is a must.
This also means you need a certain level of Mandarin Chinese knowledge to hire a driver. We got ours through Taobao for just shy of 1500 yuan, which included pick-up from Yinchuan and we stayed with him for the entire trip. Before venturing into the desert, we first stopped at their centre for a washroom break while the driver adds a flag to the back for visibility and deflates the tires. Then it is a bumpy and nauseous ride into the sand dunes.
We ended up making 4 official stops by the lakes, with an additional stop a bit further away for the 5th lake. It was surprisingly busy especially at the 2nd lake, where hordes of tourists made quite a lot of noise in the middle of the desert, and many drones flying above them to capture the perfect shot.
Although you are deposited next to the lakes during the official stops, the view from the air is substantially better since many lakes shine in different colours, which you can't truly see by walking along the coast. However, registering your drone in China is not easy for foreigners, since their website is only in Chinese and requires a Chinese phone number to receive acceptance codes.
DON'T BOTHER GOING IF YOU ARE NOT GOING TO DRONE!
Also beware that washrooms along the way are very basic and not clean. Pack your own lunch as well, as not all stops offer food, and even then, it's just skewers and BBQ. Don't expect a proper restaurant or convenience store. Pace yourself with food as motion-sickness is very much possible out in the sand dunes.
These photos were taken just after the National Day Golden Week in October 2025. The weather initially in Yinchuan was cloudy but the skies gradually, and thankfully, cleared up as we neared the first lake. After all, why would it rain in the desert?
