The unknown distance to the great beyond stares back at my grieving frame. There's nothing I can say. Goodnight, and travel well
Unfortunately during my last few days of adventure in the Gobi Desert I haven’t been able to access the internet. So as a consolation prize I’ve posted two posts tonight, one covering the train ride (there isn’t much to cover, it’s a train) and my day yesterday, the other covering today.
Today was… well I guess I’m a bit spoiled being from Utah. We started out the day by eating the crappy breakfast buffet at the hotel (yes Dad, all hotel breakfasts in Taiwan and China are horrible, if you want to eat well hit the streets). We then drove 3 ½ hours over unpaved roads through the end of the Gobi Desert and into the Taklimakan Desert, we rode out just over the border into the Xinjiang Province and right up to the border of China and Mongolia.
There we saw the ruins of the longest stretch of the Great Wall of China which was built during the Han Dynasty in206 BC. It was a more intact version of the Wall that we had seen driving into Dunhuang, and included THE checkpoint for getting into China at the time. It was probably the coolest thing that we got to see all day.
After that we drove another hour and a half further over bumpier unpaved roads out to the middle of the desert. We made it to the desert region where they filmed the movie ‘Hero’, which was dotted with rock formations left over from years of wind erosion. It looked like a grey/white version of Goblin Valley. The most interesting fact about this desert, I thought at least was in the history of the desert itself.
The Chinese describe the Taklimakan Desert as a place where ‘chickens don’t lay eggs, and cows don’t defecate’ (at least that is the nice way of translating the phrase). It is the closest you will ever get to being on Mars here on Earth. It almost never rains, and that means almost never. They can’t dig wells because they can’t dig deep enough to get to the water using any modern machinery. Because it is so dry there have never been any animal bones found anywhere but the outskirts, and there is no bacteria that lives in the desert. It is the world’s most arid region. Also, as far as they can tell it has been a desert since the Earth began, as they have never found any fossils of any living thing ever, nor have they ever found any traces of water being there at any time in the history of the Earth. No wonder they call it the desert which ‘people enter into and never return from’. Before modern travel, during the Silk Road Era, it would take 3-4 years to cross the desert and come back. Also, the sand dune mountain that we rode camels on yesterday is bigger than the entire nation of Singapore. Really.
Marco Polo wrote about the Taklimakan Desert when he went to China. Back then they called it the ‘Ghost City’ for a few reasons. Apparently because of the large amounts of iron ore in the earth around the area there is a lot of magnetic distortion which causes many people to feel dizzy when they enter into it. Also when Marco Polo and his group arrived their magnetic compasses didn’t work. Dehydration was a common problem, so naturally people would ‘hear voices’ and wander off to their death. Finally at night as the winds pick up they howl as they go through the rock formations in a way that reminded people of ghosts.
Today people go there to see the ‘rock formations’. We boarded a small tour bus and took off to different places in the desert. At random times the tour guide would stop and say, “Look. It’s the Chinese Sphinx (or a lion’s head or something random like that).” Only thing is it didn’t look like that at all. That is why living in Utah has spoiled me as far as looking at natural rock phenomena. The only really interesting thing that we saw out in the middle of nowhere was the houses that the tour guides lived in. They really weren’t houses, more like holes in the ground that were reinforced with bricks and had thatched roofs covered in sand. The tour guide told us that all of them lived in these hole-type houses because it allowed them to get out of the heat, because of course none of them had electricity. He said the only downside to living in one of these houses (only one, cause I could think of a lot) was that after sandstorms they would be buried and have to dig themselves out of their homes, sometimes through six or seven feet of sand.
After looking at everything we headed back 2 ½ hours home. Dr. Honey’s kids have decided they always have to be with me, so I find myself doing everything with/for them. In fact at dinner tonight one of the waitresses told me how cute my kids were and asked which girl was my wife. Yeah, I’m still not married, don’t worry.
After dinner we headed to the airport, got on the plane, and now I’m sitting in another 4 star hotel in Xi’an. It’s already midnight, which means I’m going to be tired tomorrow, but we’re taking a few long drives out to see the Terra Cotta Warriors and some other things out in who knows where. I should be able to get some sleep in on bus rides if I can get Dr. Honey’s kids to fall asleep too.
Today was… well I guess I’m a bit spoiled being from Utah. We started out the day by eating the crappy breakfast buffet at the hotel (yes Dad, all hotel breakfasts in Taiwan and China are horrible, if you want to eat well hit the streets). We then drove 3 ½ hours over unpaved roads through the end of the Gobi Desert and into the Taklimakan Desert, we rode out just over the border into the Xinjiang Province and right up to the border of China and Mongolia.
There we saw the ruins of the longest stretch of the Great Wall of China which was built during the Han Dynasty in206 BC. It was a more intact version of the Wall that we had seen driving into Dunhuang, and included THE checkpoint for getting into China at the time. It was probably the coolest thing that we got to see all day.
After that we drove another hour and a half further over bumpier unpaved roads out to the middle of the desert. We made it to the desert region where they filmed the movie ‘Hero’, which was dotted with rock formations left over from years of wind erosion. It looked like a grey/white version of Goblin Valley. The most interesting fact about this desert, I thought at least was in the history of the desert itself.
The Chinese describe the Taklimakan Desert as a place where ‘chickens don’t lay eggs, and cows don’t defecate’ (at least that is the nice way of translating the phrase). It is the closest you will ever get to being on Mars here on Earth. It almost never rains, and that means almost never. They can’t dig wells because they can’t dig deep enough to get to the water using any modern machinery. Because it is so dry there have never been any animal bones found anywhere but the outskirts, and there is no bacteria that lives in the desert. It is the world’s most arid region. Also, as far as they can tell it has been a desert since the Earth began, as they have never found any fossils of any living thing ever, nor have they ever found any traces of water being there at any time in the history of the Earth. No wonder they call it the desert which ‘people enter into and never return from’. Before modern travel, during the Silk Road Era, it would take 3-4 years to cross the desert and come back. Also, the sand dune mountain that we rode camels on yesterday is bigger than the entire nation of Singapore. Really.
Marco Polo wrote about the Taklimakan Desert when he went to China. Back then they called it the ‘Ghost City’ for a few reasons. Apparently because of the large amounts of iron ore in the earth around the area there is a lot of magnetic distortion which causes many people to feel dizzy when they enter into it. Also when Marco Polo and his group arrived their magnetic compasses didn’t work. Dehydration was a common problem, so naturally people would ‘hear voices’ and wander off to their death. Finally at night as the winds pick up they howl as they go through the rock formations in a way that reminded people of ghosts.
Today people go there to see the ‘rock formations’. We boarded a small tour bus and took off to different places in the desert. At random times the tour guide would stop and say, “Look. It’s the Chinese Sphinx (or a lion’s head or something random like that).” Only thing is it didn’t look like that at all. That is why living in Utah has spoiled me as far as looking at natural rock phenomena. The only really interesting thing that we saw out in the middle of nowhere was the houses that the tour guides lived in. They really weren’t houses, more like holes in the ground that were reinforced with bricks and had thatched roofs covered in sand. The tour guide told us that all of them lived in these hole-type houses because it allowed them to get out of the heat, because of course none of them had electricity. He said the only downside to living in one of these houses (only one, cause I could think of a lot) was that after sandstorms they would be buried and have to dig themselves out of their homes, sometimes through six or seven feet of sand.
After looking at everything we headed back 2 ½ hours home. Dr. Honey’s kids have decided they always have to be with me, so I find myself doing everything with/for them. In fact at dinner tonight one of the waitresses told me how cute my kids were and asked which girl was my wife. Yeah, I’m still not married, don’t worry.
After dinner we headed to the airport, got on the plane, and now I’m sitting in another 4 star hotel in Xi’an. It’s already midnight, which means I’m going to be tired tomorrow, but we’re taking a few long drives out to see the Terra Cotta Warriors and some other things out in who knows where. I should be able to get some sleep in on bus rides if I can get Dr. Honey’s kids to fall asleep too.
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