Camel riding in desert

After we had safely regained Kashgar after our wanderings up to and back from the glacier (see earlier post on this topic – link below). We decided to go wandering on our own (my wife Lotty, and I) for the rest of our summer break from our work in Beijing. So to this end, we thought it might be pleasant to start off by taking a camel trip into the Taklamakan Desert which was right next to Kashgar.

Like most people outside China, we had never heard of this desert, even though it is one of the largest sand deserts in the world, at some 130 000 square miles in size (337 000 square kilometers), so we were interested to have a look at it while we were there.

So we hunted up a company who organised camel trips into the desert, made all the necessary arrangements, and took off by car to the starting point of our epic journey into this huge desert.

By the way, they had only just built a road across it a couple of years earlier, and no one much had crossed it yet. Also the Chinese used it for their atomic bomb testing apparently… Ho hum.

And of course, the famous Silk Road went around it too, one arm going to the north of it, the other going around the western edge. We, to be different, intended to go straight into it, and see what happened..

We arrived at the setting off point, which turned out to be a sort of bus station on the edge of the desert. A simple building with a glass roof, long rows of plastic chairs and a short length of road outside it. And beyond that, a vista of enormous sand dunes, so we couldn’t see very far into the desert. Just enough to whet our appetites. Oh and of course a lot of disdainful looking Bactrian camels (the sort with two humps).

The images will open if you double click on them…. I am sorry about this.