Traveling to Xinjiang cannot avoid the topic of deserts. The two trips to Xinjiang that started on November 6 both had desert itineraries. The first part of the itinerary on the 7th and 8th, dedicated more than half a day from the second day, the driver drove me alone, driving 80 kilometers in one direction, to the Kumtag Desert; the second part started on the 9th The itinerary has been with the desert many times. The most impressive one is on the 13th. It took almost a whole day to cross the Taklamakan Desert along the road from Alar to Hotan. The trip to the desert made up for the gap in the "sea of death" that sixties people walked through.
The Kumtag Desert is located at the southernmost tip of Shanshan County. It is 62 kilometers long from east to west and 40 kilometers wide from north to south, with a total area of about 1880 square kilometers. It stands in the Turpan Basin, the lowest altitude in the world. Kumtag gathers all major desert types in the world and is the only desert in the world that is close to the city. The city and the desert are closely accompanied, and the yellow sand and the green trees have been together for thousands of years, performing the eternal miracle of life and death. With the spirit of the Guloulan civilization, for thousands of years, the sand will not enter, the green will not retreat, and the people will not move. The sand, green and the city are in harmony with each other, writing a magnificent chapter of the harmonious coexistence of man and nature. Kumtag means "Sand Mountain" in Uighur. The formation of the Kumtag Desert is mainly due to the strong winds from the Qijiaojing tuyere of the Tianshan Mountains and the Dabancheng tuyere, carrying a large amount of sand along the way, meeting, colliding and depositing in the Kumtag area, forming a desert with sand mountains. Unique natural landscape. Standing in the old city of Shanshan, looking to the south, the golden desert is majestic and majestic, the green vegetation is colorful, and the desert and the oasis silently look at each other, like loyal lovers, giving people endless reverie.
Kumtag Desert Scenic Area is a national AAAA-level scenic spot. When you arrive at more than 10 o'clock in the morning, you will enter the park against the clock. The entrance of the scenic spot is not far from the drop-off point of Line 2, and it can be easily reached on foot. The driver underestimated my walking ability, worried about time constraints, and insisted on buying a 30 yuan sightseeing ticket for me. After payment, carry the tickets and walk back and forth. Not far from the entrance, there is a sand lake at the foot of the sand mountain. The lake is colorful, with pavilions and pavilions on the lake. The desert is different from other natural landscapes. It does not need artificial carving at all. A gust of wind or a rain can create a different scene. When you come to the sand mountain, you must have both travel and play. I have experienced sand car rides, camel walks and board sand boarding before, but this time I was alone and could only climb mountains to see the scenery. The slope of Kumtagsha is steep and the sand is fine. If you step down, you will be sunk deep in the sand. If you don’t move your feet quickly, you may fall back to the original place. Every step is not easy. Climbing to the top of the mountain, overlooking the north, all the way is bounded by an endless desert with no grass growing, which is desperate; Looking to the south, the sand hills have different shapes and are golden in color. The folds of countless sand and stones are like solidified waves, extending out of sight.
There are many tourists on the top of the mountain, some swallow clouds and fog to calm down the tiredness on the way to climb; some face up to the sky, enjoying the sunshine of the winter desert; Talk about love, count the fleeting years. The integration of the soul and nature makes the reserved, mature and sophisticated adults become pure and innocent; the vanity and wretchedness of the world are detached, and the loneliness and sadness are gradually exiled. Not far from the crowd, there are two crooked moon-like sand hills, over the crowded hills, come here for a stroll. The wind is calm and the sand is calm, the hills and ridges on the mountain are smooth and smooth, one side of the sand slope is like water, and the other side is like quicksand, and the soft sand under the feet is like cotton, one step at a time; the sun is shining on the body, warming the heart, being in the desert, there is a feeling Qing, the unknown self-forgetfulness.
Located in the center of the Tarim Basin, the Taklamakan Desert is about 1,000 kilometers long from east to west, 400 kilometers wide from north to south, and covers an area of 330,000 square kilometers. It is distributed in the four regions of Bayingoleng, Aksu, Kashgar, and Hotan. The desert is surrounded by high mountains on all sides, the Tianshan Mountains are in the north, the Kunlun Mountains are in the south, the Pamirs are in the west, and the east gradually transitions to the Lop Nur swamp basin. The surface of the desert is formed by loose alluvium hundreds of meters thick. Affected by the wind, the sand covered by the wind moves up to 300 meters. The topographical features formed by the wind are various, and sand dunes of various shapes and sizes can be seen . The desert is surrounded by the Yarkant River, Tarim River, Hotan River and Cheerchen River running through both banks. Since the Tarim Basin is an inland drainage basin, all the runoff from the surrounding mountains gathers in the basin itself, supplying water for the river and the groundwater layer.
The Taklamakan Desert is the largest desert in my country and the second largest mobile desert in the world, with the largest area of shifting sand in the world. In Uighur, Taklimakan means "going in, but not getting out". The British explorer Stein called it the "Sea of Death" a hundred years ago. It is said that standing on the Qiaokatag Mountain at an altitude of 1,413 meters in the hinterland of Taklimakan, you can see that Taklamakan is boundless under the vast sky. They all feel the insignificance of the gains and losses in life. It may be this kind of magic that attracts thousands of tourists to cross the Taklamakan Desert.
For adventure travel, crossing the Taklamakan is an adventure crossing with Yutian or Moyu as the starting point (or ending point) and Alar as the ending point (starting point). Among the two routes, Yutian Dahe is the most difficult along the road. . When a friend recommended self-driving crossing to me, he was not moved by it. We are not explorers and lack professional training. Naturally, we just drive through the desert road from Alar to Hotan. Even so, the 425-kilometer Ahe Highway, plus a detour to the Rewak Buddhist site on the way, took us a whole day.
When I traveled to Xinjiang more than 20 years ago, the economy was generally underdeveloped and the infrastructure was relatively backward. I remember our colleagues with two cars, the first car arrived at the destination before dark, and the other car lost its way because there was no road today, and couldn't make phone calls, so it was forced to stop on the Gobi Desert overnight. Today, Xinjiang is developing rapidly. With Urumqi as the center, more than a dozen areas such as Yining, Altay, Turpan, Hami, Kashgar, and Hotan have opened to navigation; road traffic has basically formed a center with Urumqi as the center, with expressways as the skeleton, and The national and provincial highways are the backbone, surrounding the two basins, connecting the north and the south of the Tianshan Mountains, radiating the main prefectures and Corps, connecting the mainland in the east, and going out of Central Asia in the west, leading to a large transportation network in Xinjiang; although there are not many railway lines, the general mileage Relatively long, important cities can be reached by train.
There are two desert highways in Taklamakan, one is Luntai-Minfeng Desert Highway, which passes through Lunnan Oilfield, Tarim River, Xiaotang, and Tazhong 4 Oilfields. It was completed in 1995, with a length of 566 kilometers. It is currently the longest through-flow in the world. The grade road in the desert; the other is the Alar to Hotan desert road, which is built along the Hotan River and designed according to the standard of a first-class road. The desert section is 407 kilometers long and was completed in 2007. The highway pavement adopts the theory of strong foundation and thin surface, and the subgrade is filled with aeolian sand, reinforced with geotechnical woven cloth, and constructed with new technologies and techniques. Since the Taklimakan is a mobile desert, in order to protect the roadbed from erosion by quicksand, the road surface and dunes buried in the road, mechanical protection measures were built on both sides of the road with reed grass grids during road construction, so that the desert road looks different from ordinary roads.
The Ahe Desert Highway is like an elegant colored train running through the hinterland of the Taklamakan Desert from north to south. The road conditions are very good, there are not many vehicles, and the car is very comfortable to drive on the endless desert. Outside the car, the sand ridges are like giant dragons resting on the ground. Various sand dunes such as honeycomb shape, feather shape, and fish scale shape are unpredictable. The sky is blue, the ground is yellow, and it is either yellow or blue. Minimalism taken to the extreme. The vast desert, the silent sand sea, majestic and quiet, the continuous yellow sand meets the sky, it is impossible to imagine where is the end of the desert. When you first enter, you are very excited. After you go deep, there is no one, not even a little green, and you will suddenly get bored and lose your passion.
In order to prevent the visual fatigue of drivers and passengers, not only service areas are set up every 100 kilometers on both sides of the desert road, but also viewing platforms are set up at suitable locations in combination with the natural environment distribution, so that tourists can watch the sand sea and the scenery along the way. However, these service areas and viewing platforms cannot be compared with inland expressways. They have neither refueling and watering facilities, nor any construction and service personnel, but only parking places on the side of the road. Even so, every time one or two Populus euphratica appeared, we had to stop to take pictures. The dead Populus euphratica points sadly to the sky. Although it has added a lot of desolation and tragedy to the desert, when it sprouts in the coming year, it will definitely inject life into the silent sand sea.
Apart from the desert, the most meaningful thing to do when crossing the Taklamakan is to visit the Rewak Buddhist site. The site is located in the desert 50 kilometers northwest of Luopu County. It is a temple building site centered on a pagoda. Its architectural form and mural style are deeply influenced by Gandhara culture. It was built during the Southern and Northern Dynasties and gradually abandoned in the late Tang Dynasty. A large number of murals and statues have been unearthed, which have high research value. Since it was discovered by Stein in the early 20th century, it has aroused great repercussions in the archaeological and historical circles at home and abroad. In 2001, it was listed by the State Council as the fifth batch of national key cultural relics protection units. On the way to and from the Rewak Buddhist site, we saw wild camels twice, and it was difficult for us to approach them due to fear of humans. This is the only large wild animal we have seen in the boundless desert. It is both exciting and unexpected. It is the best gift given to us by the Taklamakan Desert before saying goodbye.
New Shaanxi winter trip diary 3 2019.12.1 in Zhuhai
