Journey into the Gobi Desert

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There are those of us who have an extensive knowledge of the whos, whens and whats of history, veritable encyclopaedias of this earth; and then there are the historically inept muppets like myself, whose brief escapade into the annals of the past via a couple of years of appropriate schooling ranged from 'how to build a motte and bailey castle' to 'World War One' with precious little inbetween. We are left perplexed and knee deep in metaphorical quicksand in any museum, gazing vainly at dates and place names we will surely never remember. These nuggets of wisdom are apparently intended to fit snugly into a jigsaw of historical comprehension which is a mere mental void. I feel the blame should be shouldered in equal measure by the influences of Hawkwind and Bexley and Erith Technical High School.

It is however, never too late to change the tide. A couple of years back I pointedly bored myself to tears with the first 30 chapters of 'A Child's History of England' by Charles Dickens (until I got somewhat distracted by 'The Mighty Boosh', a more contemporary marvel). Once again rising to the challenge of climbing the historical sand dune, and with 6 days more of holiday travel time earned at the end of our punishing teacher training schedule, we set foot northwards along the old 'Silk Road'. And so, here is what we learnt, with some pictures to keep you interested if you happen to be in that second category of individual who thinks the Boer War was some kind of swine-related farming disagreement. I'll write it down quickly before I forget it all.

The Silk Road starts at the Eastern end in Xian (which was the ancient capital of the Qin dynasty) and passed through Zhangye, which is about an hour an a half down the road from Minle where I live, and the nearest place that isn't a dusty village. Zhangye was therefore part of an ancient trading route which stretched for 4000miles from Eastern Europe through the middle east, connecting places like Persia, Egypt, Turkey, Rome, Afghanistan, India and China. Mostly merchants travelled certain sections of the route to trade goods at key settlements, many of which in the Chinese section of the route were desert oasis towns in the Gobi desert, which they reached with the use of Bactrian (2 humped) camels still around today. The route runs up northwards from Zhangye through the Hexi corridor, which is a 10km wide gap between the Hei shan mai (Black mountains) and the huge Quilian mountains. At this point, the Han Chinese built Jiayuguan fort. Nortwest of this, the route splits as it passes through Xinjiang (pronounced 'Shinjiang'). This is the vast westernmost largely Uighur muslim region that has been increasingly settled by Han Chinese with some ensuing cultural friction aggravated by certain policies. There was a northern route that went through places like Taskent, Turpan and Urumqi, and a southern route passing through Dunhuang, Cherchen and Kashgar. The Chinese section of the route was largely opened up around 114BC by Zhang Qian, a military general and envoy who travelled into the Western regions when they were under the control of the nomadic Xiongdu tribes. Are you taking this all in, or are you just looking at the pictures?? Please concentrate. Anyway, the aforementioned general, despite being captured by the nomadic barbarians and held prisoner a couple of times, was eventually able to bring back loads of useful information and make a few connections, leading to the forging of ties with lands as far away as Persia. Ooh, well done Mr Zhang!

I'm even boring myself now. We travelled first to Jiayuguan, which like Zhangye is situated close to the border of Inner Mongolia. Firstly, we had a look around the fort. It was built in 1372, and is both quite impressive and in fairly good nick. Unruly dissidents were traditionally expelled from the gates into the western lands of barrenness, filth and barbarianism. Great views, but unfortunately the camera ran out of oomph. The fort is carefully positioned along the great wall, much of which remains in this area. Further eastwards are a couple of sections of the great wall running through the mountains which have been restored, so you can climb up the innumerable steep steps. We had to pause for breath a few times but it was a pleasure as the views were amazing and the whole area was devoid of tourists.

Next, we travelled further up the Hexi corridor to Dunhuang, a desert oasis town, close to which the Han Chinese built two forts in 121BC following military successes. The Great wall was extended to here and population grew as it became a key ancient trading town. Dunhuang houses the Mogao caves, the most revered ancient Buddhist site in all China. The caves were started in 352AD, when a travelling monk had a vision and set up camp here. Afterwards, for a period of more than a thousand years, more and more caves were whittled out of the rock and inside Buddhist sculptures were carved into the bare rock. They were created by monks and pilgrims and in many cases the later ones were commisioned by the wealthy in order to buy spiritual salvation for themselves and their families (yeah, dream on!), thus the paintings are sometimes textured with incredibly expensive blue lapis lazuli from Afghanistan, green malachite and gold leaf (the latter long since melted off by foreign visitors!)

Many of the key scrolls and treasures once hidden here were prised from the Chinese grip in the early 20th century by swindling foreigners with the assistance of corrupt local officials and whisked away to places such as the British Museum, a key fact raised during tour of the site and duly noted. Ah, those scheming foreigners again. Hmm, is it not a little strange that in these times of honesty and openness, the British museum doesn't return all its stolen artefacts to the parts of the world that the great scavengers once scoured in their Empiric quests. The caves are mindblowing. There are hundreds, although only a few are open to the public. One houses the third biggest Buddha in the world, 35m high...on entry you can only see the hem of his robe carved into the back of the cave. You walk forward and suddenly this immense Buddha is towering above you. Unfortunately no photographs are allowed in the caves, so we could only photograph the outside. The paintings are amazingly intricate and extremely well preserved.

After checking out the grottoes, we began our exploration of the Gobi desert. Initially we took a little trip to the South of Dunhuang, to Mingsha Shan, where you can find an sandy ocean of immense sand dunes, some towering up to 1700m high. It's mental, check out the pictures. Obviously, the Chinese have done everything possible to turn it into a cheesy playground for visitors with an extortionate entry price (how can you charge people for entry to a natural area) camel rides, dune buggies and massive orange moon boots for hire. There's a little oasis lake and pagoda amongst the dunes which is well pretty. I'd never seen real sand dunes so I was pretty excited by it all. Several days later, I'm still finding sand in places you wouldn't expect.

We, well Li and I), tried out the local speciality in Dunhuang, 'Lu rou mien' (Donkey noodles). Sadly, it seemed to consist noodles, tiny bits of mushroom and tofu and one minute 1cm square bite of donkey. We later overcame this problem by ordering a separate plate of donkey meat to add, and the subsequent dish was pretty tasty. After a few months here in China, donkey meat is probably my favourite meat, though I guess it'll be hard to come by when I get back.

The next day we joined up with a solo Chinese traveller, Kaka, and headed deep into the Gobi desert. The only way to do this was to hire a vehicle and driver, and the logical choice for desert terrain...a standard green Chinese taxi with crap suspension.

A little aside...China has two of the ten most polluted cities in the world as a result of chemical/industrial pollution (Linfen and Tianying) and three of the ten worst cities for air pollution (Beijing being the joint worst in the world...you can feel it in your throat after a few minutes there. The others are Guangzhou and Chongqing). It also has a terrible reputation in regards to certain human rights issues and trade/consumption of endangered species. So, I feel duty bound to relay a few positive bits of information. North of Jiayuguan is one of the biggest windfarms you'll ever see. It stretches endlessly across the desert, is partly operational and partly still an ongoing project, but is due to produce 20,000Mw by 2020. It is one of 6 huge projects presently underway in China. Secondly, the cities are full of silent assassins. The modus operandi of manouvre is the electric scooter, and it is everywhere. It's usage has been pushed due to awareness of the air pollution problem with mass response. Environmentally a good idea, though you need eyes in the back of your head to avoid them as they zooming up behind you noiselessly. Thirdly, the vast majority of the taxis in China now run on natural gas, which emits 87 percent less nitrogen oxide, 70 percent less carbon monoxide and 25 less carbon dioxide.

Thus it was that we paused at the 'gas station' and evacuated the car for a few minutes whilst the attendants lifted the bonnet and filled us up with 'gas' for our desert adventure. Before long, we were rattling along in our makeshift 4x4 into the nothingness.

The Gobi desert is 1000m wide and 500m north to south, and basically exists because of the Himalayas, as all the moisture in the air passing over them condenses around the mountains. Even in the south of the Gobi, the temperature can fall to below -32, and the desert grows by about 1400 square km a year on the southern edge so in combination with re-routing of rivers, natural desertification means farmland is disappearing worryingly fast. It is home to weird and deadly creatures like the camel spider, which is renowned for attacking anything that moves including humans in a psychotic rage, and the infamous Mongolian Death Worm, which is so poisonous that a mere touch will incurr death in seconds and reputedly can kill from distance firing lightning rays from its rectum! This sounds like nonsense, but apparently whilst there is no scientific proof, Mongolians in certain areas are convinced it exists and evidence lends credence to innumerable claimed sightings. It is said to live beneath the ground for most of the year, only rising to the surface during sudden rains which may occur in June/July around the Chinese border.

Suffice to say, we didn't encounter either beast, but we did come across some endangered Goitered gazelles close to an oasis, which took off at the speed of light. The taxi bumped and rattled along through the desert to our intended destinations. For much of the trip there was a tarmacked road but at times there was only a dirt/gravel road and for some of the journey there was merely a general but commonly known direction across the desert where the occasional vehicle would sometimes pass within a couple of hundred metres.

My image of a desert was always a composite of 'Lawrence of Arabia' and some mental concept of a cartoon Mexican panorama with cacti and the like. In actual fact, most of the desert land in the north of China is just endless barren nothingness. Some areas are dry, cracked earth but much of it is just a seemingly infinite patio-flat gravelpit. If the Almighty were to take the Himalayas and pass them through an immense divine mincing machine, then pour the resultant pebbly mass across the land, the result would be something like the Gobi desert. After driving for a while, the horizon goes weird, and you can see black waves riding along it and black shapes rising out of it as if islands in hazy lakes. These are the mirages, which I never realised but are actually consistent, so several people will all see the same mirage at the same time. If you point a camera at them, the shapes disappear through the lens. Weird!

We went to see the Yumenguan pass (the Jade Gate), so named as it was trading point for Jade carried along the Silk Road. We stopped at the museum here, and found out about the kind of stuff introduced to China along this route, including Lions, Giraffes, Camels, walnuts, grapes and various spices. Not sure where all the giraffes have gone, though I would assume anything that big would get gobbled up pretty quickly in a country like China where horses seem to be the only living creature that have escaped inclusion on any menu. We also saw the Yanguan (Southern Gate) and associated ruins. Both were so old that there was little left but ruins. You could also see the oldest remaining parts of the Great Wall of China in this region, which dated to the same period, around 120BC.

Finally we journeyed out into a weird geological landscape in the middle of the desert, known as the Yadan national park. This used to be a lake that eroded thousands of years back. What remains is a vast landscape of bizzare rocks that I assume to be sandstone, jutting up from a totally black landscape. It's like being on another planet. Here, in the middle of nowhere, a million miles from anywhere, there are 4 guys sitting around playing cards and drinking tea. You have to pay them 60yuan to be driven out to photograph specific selected rocks which are said to resemble a lion, warships a sphinx and the like before they let you look around for 20 minutes then escort you back out. Fantastic place, bizarre concept. And here, in the middle of the Gobi desert, I finally came to my ultimate realisation; that I would rather be frazzled by a thousand kw of electrical malevolence fired from the arse of the Mongolian death worm than experience another 'tourist tour' anywhere for some time to come - even in the middle of the desert.

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