Join YPT for full-on urban exploration in the ghost city of Kangbashi!

If you’ve ever spent any time in a Chinese city you’ll be well used to the throng, walking the night markets where it seems like every conceivable snack is on offer or pushing your way through people trying to sell you things outside train stations. Kangbashi is different, and it is almost a welcome novelty having almost a whole city square, a hospital, train station or apartment complex to ourselves.

Kangbashi ghost city shot to international prominence with a number of articles by Al Jazeera and other international media. Having grown rich overnight on the profits of coal and natural gas, by 2012 the money had run out and the city was in high levels of debt. Kangbashi therefore is not an abandoned city but a new city waiting for people to come.

The YPT Kangbashi ghost city tour is a chance for us to explore the urban infrastructure in varied levels of completedness. It is a chance to explore and as tourists you can have input into exactly what we do. If a building or particular complex catches your eye we can go and check it out!

On the tour, we check out the mosque – built for Muslims who might come in the future – as well as a mansion complex, abandoned halfway through construction, and a brand new hospital, although it’s not the type of hospital you’d want to go to for emergency treatment! Our guide will also take you on a walking tour through Kangbashi city centre, the huge sand dunes overlooking the city with the odd camel wandering around and rows of empty residential complexes standing to the side and the random buildings dotted around the Genghis Khan Mausoleum complex.

We leave from the airport, built in the shape of a Mongol yurt, where we generally take time to admire the ceiling murals depicting all kinds of ethnic Mongolian scenes, a sight which can even be enjoyed from the McDonald’s! Though not before we eat in Ordos’s very own North Korean restaurant, where the Korean waitresses are particularly chatty and feast on Mongolian barbecue.

This intriguing trip can be done as one of our planned extensions from our current tours, or as a flexible independent package escorted by one of our expert YPT guides.

Note: For those wishing to start or finish in a city other than Beijing, please get in touch.

If you’ve got a few days spare in China before the tour, join us for all-out urban exploration in Ordos ghost city in Inner Mongolia!