Yinchuan is located near the western bank of the upper course of the Yellow River, near the western end of the Great Wall of China in the south-central section of the Helan Mountains and Ordos Desert.
It is served by Yinchuan Hedong Airport. It is 25 km (16 mi) from Yinchuan and has flights to Beijing, Chengdu, Dunhuang, Guangzhou, Shanghai, Xian, and Zhengzhou.
It is served by a river port at Hengcheng, about 15 km (9.3 mi) to the east. Until the 1950s the river, which is navigable downstream as far as Baotou in the Inner Mongolian autonomous region and upstream to Zhongwei and Zhongning, was the chief communication link.
Highways also link the city to Baotou along the river, to Lanzhou in Gansu province to the southwest, to Wuwei in Gansu to the west, and to Xi'an in Shaanxi province to the southeast.
Since 1958 the city has been on the railway from Lanzhou to Baotou and is thus linked to other parts of China by rail.