The moment their feet touched the sand, it was fine and soft.
Hiking challenges your willpower — doesn’t hiking across a desert sound even more thrilling? This Golden Week, a group of outdoor sports enthusiasts from Wuhan trekked across China’s fourth-largest desert — the Tengger Desert. Yesterday afternoon, 24 team members, led by guide Yuan Zhonghua, successfully completed the crossing.
The hiking event was organized by an outdoor sports club in Wuchang, with most participants being young white-collar workers aged 25 to 35. In Xiao Yuan’s view, they spend most of their time sitting in offices staring at computers, rarely getting the chance to experience the wonders of nature out in the wilderness.
Xiao Yuan graduated with a degree in outdoor sports from China University of Geosciences and has been working as a guide for four years. This was his second time leading a team into the desert. “There were so many fun things!” he said. The day before yesterday, the team encountered hospitable herders at Swan Lake Camp, who gave them a big watermelon — incredibly sweet, which is quite rare in the desert in autumn.
They say traveling is the best way to test a relationship. On this trip, Xiao Yuan also played the role of peacemaker, helping a quarreling couple reconcile. “The girl loved taking photos and struck several poses everywhere they went. The guy got impatient with all the picture-taking, and they ended up in a big fight. In the end, the girl sat on the ground sulking and refused to move, while the guy stubbornly ignored her,” Xiao Yuan recalled. He had to first calm the girl down, then persuade the guy to be more understanding and show some team spirit. After a two-hour delay, the group finally set off again.
Yesterday afternoon, the group arrived in Yinchuan. After five days of close companionship, the team members had become good friends. Xiao Yuan revealed that outdoor hiking has become a very natural way for young people to make friends nowadays, and he’s even acted as a matchmaker for quite a few people.