Tuyugou Village and Canyon, Xinjiang

Tuyugou sits in a gap in the Flaming Mountains where a stream comes out of the rock — which is why there are vineyards, a village and a thousand years of continuous settlement in the middle of a desert.

Tuyugou is what happens when a stream finds a way out of a mountain in the middle of a desert.

The village sits in a gorge cut through the Flaming Mountains between Turpan and Shanshan, where water emerging from the rock supports vineyards, orchards and a settlement that has been continuously occupied for well over a thousand years. Mud-brick houses stack up both walls of the canyon in ochre terraces, the same colour as the cliffs behind them, so from a distance the village is hard to pick out at all.

The old village

The historic core is now a managed scenic area with an entrance fee of around 50 yuan, and it earns it.

What’s preserved is the fabric rather than a facsimile: flat-roofed courtyard houses, narrow lanes with drying racks overhead, carved and painted window frames, and a mosque that is the most beautiful building for a hundred kilometres in any direction. The handicrafts sold here are still made by hand on the premises, and the food stalls are cooking for residents as much as for visitors.

It reads as a working village that has been tidied up, which is the best outcome this kind of designation can produce.

If you can, stay the night. The homestays are simple, the day-trippers leave by late afternoon, and the gorge in evening light is a different place entirely.

The canyon

Just outside the village, the Tuyugou grand canyon is free to enter and worth an evening. Red rock walls, a dry riverbed, and enough scale to be genuinely impressive; a taxi from the village takes minutes, and sunset is the hour to be there.

The colours are the thing — this is the same formation as the Flaming Mountains, and low sun turns the entire canyon the shade the name promises.

Practical notes

Getting there: between Turpan and Shanshan, easiest by taxi or hired car from either. Turpan is an hour from Ürümqi by high-speed rail.

Where to sleep: a handful of village homestays in Tuyugou itself, or a hotel in Turpan if you’d rather not.

What to eat: the Xinjiang standard, cooked at village scale — naan and milk tea for breakfast, baked buns from the oven, plov and hand-pulled laghman later, lamb skewers in the evening. If you’re staying with a family, you’ll eat what they eat, which is the better option. See our food guide.

When: September and October — grape harvest, workable temperatures, best light. Summer here is over 40°C.

Nearby: Buddhist cave sites in the surrounding cliffs — Tuyugou was a monastic centre before the region turned Muslim — and the ruined Silk Road cities of Jiaohe and Gaochang, both within reach of Turpan.