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.
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