Jim and Fuzzmund

Breakfast at 7am and meet up at 8:30am for the bus out to the desert.

Breakfast at our hotel was a buffet; no China Buffet King, but certainly Zipper-worthy for breakfast. Congee, some kind of meat and veggies, soups, and for us hwaat folk, some fried eggs and toast and jam. I left the toast and jam alone, but have to admit I couldn't turn down the eggs. They also had coffee, which was a bit surprising. Perfect.

Then we layered up, as it was a cold crisp morning. I had a t-shirt, long sleeved thermal shirt, a regular long sleeved shirt, my fleece and a wind breaker on top and three layers on the bottom as well. Yen did the five layer nacho dip as well and we were so glad we did. The bus was cramped with all nine of us plus a local guide to help us translate and the driver. The bus is really just a glorified van. On the way to the desert, we stopped at a mound of dirt and found out that this mound was actually a part of the great wall from the Ming Dynasty! Apparently in this region, they were using mostly softer materials (clay) that have degraded into a very long mound of dirt -- as far as the eye can see, besides the odd break where a farmer has cleared a path for a road or barn or something. Very cool indeed.

Then we drove up to a dead-end sandy road and got out to stretch. We didn't really know why we were stretching at the time. It was just recommended and we did it. Not far behind us was a herd of camels -- a full dozen of them! The two camel farmers were great with them and had us on them relatively quickly. We formed two "caravans" or lines that were all roped together. Each camel had its nose pierced and had a wooden stake through the piercing that was tied to the camel's saddle in front of it. There was only a few feet of slack between each camel; kind of reassuring at the time, but turned out to be more scary than anything. Each caravan of six was led by one of the two farmers.

We set off into the sand. At first, the landscape hadn't changed much and I was a bit disappointed by the so called "desert" excursion. Though the camel riding was kind of adrenaline inducing at the beginning when every step is a bit precarious feeling. However, within about 20 minutes, we were totally engulfed by sand and dunes and more sand. We travelled for hours and fully left civilization behind. In all directions, it was moutainous dunes after mountainous dunes. It was more breathtaking than any desert movie could have ever prepared me for. The only movement out there was the odd lizard and some cool dung-beetles makeing intricate tracks in the sand and digging in for the evening. Un-freaking-believable.

Our guides were also quite miraculous. You never quite get an appreciation for how difficult it is to navigate sand dunes from the movies. It seems that you can just travel a straight line and get somewhere. That couldn't be farther from the truth. The dunes are massive -- each a whole mountain unto itself and so steep that it would be impossible to climb. You have to choose the route carefully so you don't get stuck in a dead end that a camel can't maneuver. One mistake could cost 30-60 minutes or more of the day.

Sometimes it's not so smooth sailing either. There are places that have pretty steep short climbs up the dunes to get to the next level of sand. Not terribly difficult for camels to do, but require a bit of leaping on occasion when the sand is very soft and causing mini landslides with each step. This is where the tethered nose ring becomes a bit scary. Although getting up the hill isn't the big problem, if one camel is up and the next one slips his nose gets a whole lot of pulling. It seemed that every step up was a close call. Then one time it happened. The first caravan had made it up the hill and I was the third camel in the second group. My camel made it up (scarily) and the two behind me as well. But the last one had a bit of a slip and started getting tugged by the face by the rest of us. Since the front one was still moving all the rest had no choice but to keep going. The last camel, being pulled so hard, didn't even have enough space to regain his footing, so ended up on it's knees on the hill, getting dragged by his face until his nose peg snapped! The camel was in a lot of pain (I assume this from the terrible noises it was making.) But they're tough and it got over it quickly. In any case it was a bit of excitement early on. They didn't re-pierce it for the time being -- they just made a rope harness for it and we were on our merry way again.

Apparently "Princess", the name that was given to the poor last camel, wasn't quite over it. A few hours later it managed to break it's harness away from the camel in front of it and start running and bucking. Her passenger couldn't hang on, and landed in the sand -- fortunately, he wasn't seriously hurt, but we were all a bit shaken up by it. Princess was having a bad day -- I guess we all do. Our guides were really good with the camels however and made sure to keep a closer eye on us all after that.

We stopped for a delicious lunch which consisted of a bag of little breads, a bag of whole cucumbers and a bag of tomatoes. They also had some weiners of sorts -- similar to hot dogs which we hungrily devoured. By shortly after 4pm, we had arrived at our first campsite. Basically it was a random valley in between some tall dunes to break the wind. It looked as though it had never been touched before. Utterly incredible. And the sand throughout was smoother and finer than any I've ever experienced. We set up our tents, gathered random dry bits of wood wherever we could find it and our guides brought out some dinner.

Later that night, we built a fire and sat around drinking massive bottles of local beer. Our guides hadn't interacted with us too much up until now, but they came to the fire and sat with us which was nice. Then they brought out the "bijo" (pronounced buy-joe I think?), which is local rice wine of sorts... 42% alcohol. They came on strong going around the circle and having a shot with each and every one of us! Then the games began. We each represented our country against the guides in rock-paper-scissors. Nobody could beat them -- and for each loss it was a shot -- high and very fast moving stakes! Then it was my turn. I won three in a row! I was getting so cocky that I even "gambei"'ed (cheers) him on the third one so he wouldn't be drinking alone. Big mistake. I lost the next three and it was down hill from there. I passed the torch to one of the aussies in the group and the games continued well into the night. Even Yen was up for the challenge and did surprisingly well for her usual non-drinking ways. When things settled a bit we started the stupid human tricks like jumping over the fire and juggling beer bottles before hitting the sack. It gets mighty cold at night. Especially when you have to get up to pee every 5 minutes. I was in bare feet, long johns and a t-shirt and ran out of the tent climbing over the dune behind our tent to find a good place. Then I realised that I was ankle deep in ice cold sand! It was a very frigid experience to say the least. However, I guess it wasn't as painful a thought as trying to get dressed in the small tent, as I did it multiple times throughout the night and never quite learned my lesson.

In the morning we had instant coffee, instant noodles and some fruit for breakfast before breaking camp and continuing into the desert. Now that we were a bit more comfortable with the camel thing, some of us even opted to go untethered. When riding solo, we hang onto the rope attached to the nose-piece and use that to stop and steer. Luckily, the camels are pretty well trained to follow the camel in front of them for the most part so it was mostly like putting it on auto-pilot. However, having something to concentrate on for the long journey made it a bit more interesting. It was fantastic actually. By doing this, you get to really know your camel's personality and what works and what doesn't and how they react to different situations. The hills, both up and down were a lot better as we began to trust our camels more as the day wore on. Instead of trepidation at the thought of each incline, I found myself looking forward to them, hoping each one was steeper than the next. I found that I could get my camel (Jim) to really step up the pace by massaging his back hump. It was quite exhilarating to be sprinting through the desert on a camel. True story. The way that the dunes work and how we had to navigate them, you end up walking along the edges of some very high sand cliffs. It was truly amazing.

By the time we set up our camp for the second night after a very long day, we were all pretty attached to our camels. We would sneak them our leftovers and go and pet them and massage behind their ears. Yen's camel, Fuzzmund, was particularly attached to her too. He'd get excited to see her coming and loved when she rubbed his head. Jim was a bit more stoic and distant, but we had a good understanding. More of a man to man respect kind of relationship, where nothing need be said, but everything was understood. Jim liked to stand up a lot. When the other camels were resting, he'd just stand there. Even the guides could really only get him to sit down long enough for me to get on and off.

The second night campsite was in a different kind of terrain -- half desert, half limey/salty pond landscape. It was much closer to civilization. Still had the heavy drinking and good times though. After dark, one of the tour company's managers was going to come out to meet us at our site, but got his van stuck in a small drift of sand that had accumulated in a nearby road. The two guides and four of our group went to help dig it out and push. With every attempt, the van just got deeper into the sand. The guides went back to camp and brought back two of the camels to lend a hand and between the eight of us (6 humans and 2 camels), the van was freed on the first try. I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that the latter 2 probably can probably take most of the credit. How many people can say that they cooperated with camels to rescue a van stuck in a sand drift in the Tenger desert? Indeed.

In the morning, we had a similar breakfast and played a bit of soccer in the sand until we broke camp. We packed up the camels and headed out for the 45 minute trek up the road to where we'd meet the "bus" back into town. It was a solemn 45 minutes, as we all know it was our final few moments with our new best friends. When we arrived, we all said our own goodbyes. As a special token, Jim let me rub behind his ears and even sat down when I asked him to. That was pretty special. Yen and Fuzz had a pretty tender moment as well and it was a quiet ride back to the city.

Back at the hotel, we had two rooms between the 10 of us to clean up and stuff. And boy did we need it! Sand in each and every orifice. We split up into a boys and girls room, and arranged all our packs for this evening's over night train ride to Xian. We then headed out to find the onion pancake woman again (that's all we've been thinking of since we had it before we left for the desert) but alas, she wasn't in her spot. We're hoping that after this post is complete, she'll be there (fingers crossed.) We did however, find a very nice woman selling fresh noodles in the market and had a bite to eat there (delicious!) before heading to the internet cafe to catch up.

We'll keep you posted when we can!