Foreign Devils

Xigeer to Desert Camp
September 23rd
147km (200m vertical)

This morning, Miles told us that “If you like rocks, then today is very scenic.” This was his sarcastic way of saying that the scenery was pretty dull and very repetitive. It was a long day of flat, straight roads, with the Tien Shan Mountains on the left and the Taklamakan Desert on the right. I did manage to make one of my tires explode by over inflating it en route, and this was the only real excitement of the day. Otherwise, we fought a headwind for much of the morning and boredom for much of the afternoon.

Reading about this region in Peter Hopkirk's “Foreign Devils on the Silk Road” gives a lot of color to a seemingly boring area. The name Taklamakan is Turkish for “go in and you won't come out”, and the desert is one of the world's most dangerous and storied. Real-life adventurers like Sir Aurel Stein inspired characters like Indiana Jones and Laura Croft as they combed through the desert in search of ancient treasures buried in the shifting sands. In addition to hostile local tribes, they faced the danger of terrible sandstorms. In fact, the yellowish “smog” that we encountered yesterday was not pollution at all – it was the impact of a sandstorm out in the desert. (Today we had much better visibility...although all we saw was more desert.) There are many local workers sweeping the edges of the road in the desert, which seems strange until you realize that the roads could quickly become covered by debris in a sandstorm.

Kashgar, where we had our last rest day, lies on the westernmost point of the Taklamakan. From here, the Silk Road branches both North and South around the desert. We are on the Northern route. Most explorers skirted the desert on this route due to its many oasis towns. These were created by flows of glacial water from the mountains to our left. Even today, we ride past continuous levies and dikes, designed to catch water from the mountains and funnel it through tunnels under the road we are on and the railroad next to it. Without them, these roads would likely get washed away each spring.

Mountains left. Desert right.

I think they guy collects and sells "junk" that he finds on the road.

Lunch in the desert:

Camp in the desert:

Tents in the desert: