A road through all that sand
There is something slightly strange about driving for hours through a desert on a paved road. Ahead of you, asphalt. On either side, sand stretching far beyond anything you can properly take in through the windows. And somewhere in the middle of it all, us and our Defender, making our way across the Taklamakan.
After Kashgar, our route took us through Khotan and onwards to Minfeng, along the southern edge of the desert. From there, we turned north towards Tazhong and Luntai. Again a very different China from all we imagined.
Into the Taklamakan.
A couple of camels keeping their own pace through the Taklamakan.
Our route from Kashgar to Turpan, straight through the heart of the Taklamakan.
Not particularly impressed by us, but happy to pose.
Our Defender on the Tarim Desert Highway, with a whole lot of sand ahead.
The highway took us right into the sand, with hours of driving ahead. There was plenty of time to look out of the window. Dunes, more dunes, and a road that seemed to carry on indefinitely.
A landscape like this is difficult to photograph. You can fit a few dunes into the frame, perhaps a stretch of road, but you lose the thing that makes being there so impressive: how much of it there is. Everything outside the photograph continues in much the same way.
And we were driving straight through it.
The Taklamakan crossing connected Minfeng in the south with Luntai in the north, taking us through a part of China that felt very far removed from the busy cities we often picture when we think of the country.
For this part of the trip, we haven't really seen any of what we imagined China would be like. Very surprised in a positive way.
A night in Tazhong
A small town right in the middle of the Taklamakan, that doesn't feel like a town at all. It's more like a pitstop for truckers and travellers. Some Motels, restaurants and shops – all surrounded by dunes.
Its name roughly means “the centre of the Taklamakan,” which seems fitting. There is even a desert botanical garden here, where researchers study how plants survive in such dry conditions. Keeping anything green in this landscape takes work.
We arrived just in time to walk into the dunes for sunset. By now, you probably know how much we love being surrounded by sand, especially at this time of day, right before sunset.
Over the past few years, we have explored dunes in Namibia, South Africa, Türkiye, Iran, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Oman, the United Arab Emirates and Pakistan. And now, here we were in China, sitting in the sand again.
Some were small and easy to climb, others so tall that reaching the top felt like climbing a mountain. We have seen orange dunes, white ones, sharp ridges and soft, rounded slopes. All of them different and exciting.
From Tazhong, we continued north towards Luntai, then onwards through Heshuo to Turpan.
More landscapes were waiting for us there. The red slopes of the Flaming Mountains, followed later by Dunhuang and the Rainbow Mountains. Eventually, we would trade the sand for the grasslands and cold mornings of the Tibetan Plateau.
This we love!