Adventure is always associated with danger, but meticulous planning and careful preparation can minimize risks — and that’s also where explorers find their confidence to survive in adversity.
1. Choosing the Expedition Season
Most deserts in China are located in the northwest, within the arid climate zone, featuring large diurnal temperature variations. Summers are extremely hot, with temperatures reaching up to 50–60 degrees Celsius, while winters are bitterly cold, with temperatures dropping as low as minus 20–30 degrees Celsius. Rainfall is scarce, with most areas receiving less than 250 millimeters of precipitation annually. Winds are frequent and strong, especially in wind-prone areas — during spring, powerful gusts sweep across the deserts between Inner Mongolia and Xinjiang, often creating sandstorms. Given these climatic conditions, it’s best to avoid the scorching summer and windy seasons when planning your adventure trip. The ideal time is usually between September and March of the following year.
2. Planning the Route and Strategy
When planning your expedition route and strategy, the first priority is to respect objective realities — formulate a feasible adventure plan that ensures your safety above all else.
Fully Self-Supported Desert Exploration
The principle behind this type of exploration is to rely entirely on your own strength or collaborative teamwork to explore the desert within certain limits. For example, winter expeditions in the Taklamakan Desert have daytime average temperatures around minus 10 degrees Celsius. Typically, an explorer carrying all necessary gear, food, and water cannot sustain activities in the desert for more than seven days, covering a travel distance of about 100 kilometers. Since this is a fully self-supported, unsupported desert expedition, explorers must carry all equipment and supplies from the start. The first day involves marching under heavy loads, which is a severe test of both physical endurance and willpower. Based on the expedition itinerary, it's possible to strategically store some food at campsites as provisions for the return journey.
Team-Based Desert Exploration
Team-based exploration can be divided into unsupported and supported types. Unsupported means that once you enter the desert, you lose all external manpower and material support, moving forward only with the assistance of camel caravans — this is the approach most expedition teams take. But even this type of exploration has its limits, because camels can carry no more than 200 kilograms in the desert, and in winter they also need to drink water every 7–10 days, consuming about 100 kilograms each time. Therefore, the usual duration of such expeditions is within 10 days, covering a range of 100–200 kilometers. Supported desert expeditions are suitable for long-distance desert crossings, involving large-scale coordinated efforts and significant funding. For instance, in the early 1990s, two cross-desert expeditions — one between China and Japan, and another between China and Britain — traversed the Taklamakan Desert using this method. Small-scale crossing teams, with the help of camel caravans, moved east-west roughly 100 kilometers from the southern edge of the Taklamakan Desert. Multiple support teams used hundreds of camels to transport supplies from national highways along the southern edge of the desert, delivering them every 150 kilometers to resupply points 100 kilometers deep into the desert.
II. Traveling Across the Sand Sea
1. Correctly Determining Direction
Walking across vast deserts, where visibility is open yet reference points for orientation are scarce, and amid undulating dunes, towering sand hills, and depressions, it’s generally impossible to walk in a straight line. Therefore, correctly determining direction is a prerequisite for desert exploration.
Using Instruments to Determine Direction
Using a compass and map to set direction was a common method in early desert explorations. This approach requires knowing your current position, identifying the location and bearing of the target area on the map, and then proceeding according to the compass bearing. Because it’s impossible to march in a straight line in the desert, constant corrections to your bearing are necessary when using this method; otherwise, it’s very difficult to reach your intended destination. In long-distance desert exploration and crossings, accurately reaching your target or finding pre-stocked supplies in the vast sea of sand is extremely challenging. By the late 1980s, with the popularization of personal satellite navigation systems (GPS) among civilians, desert exploration became far more precise, minimizing the chances of getting lost. Nowadays, nearly all desert expeditions use GPS for navigation.
Using Natural Features to Determine Direction
1) Using the North Star to Determine Direction
The North Star is a relatively bright star located in the northern sky. Finding the North Star at night means you’ve found true north. The North Star is the alpha star of the Ursa Minor constellation, with the Ursa Major constellation (mainly the Big Dipper) and Cassiopeia located on either side of it. Since China is in the Northern Hemisphere, the North Star is visible all night long.
2) Using the Sun to Determine Direction
The sun rising in the east and setting in the west is the most reliable “north indicator.” As the sun moves from east to west, shadows move from west to east. For example, in the western deserts of China, at 8 a.m., the sun rises in the east, casting shadows toward the west. At 2 p.m., the sun is due south, and shadows point north. At 8 p.m., the sun is in the west, and shadows point east. The Uyghur camel drivers who have lived around the Taklamakan Desert for generations navigate this way and never lose their way. Of course, there are other more accurate methods, such as the “gnomon shadow” method or using a watch to find direction — both are very useful in desert exploration.
3) Using Dune Orientation to Determine Direction
Wind is a major factor shaping the desert terrain. In northwest China, due to prevailing northwesterly winds, sand dunes generally form in a southeast direction. The northwest-facing side of dunes is the windward side, with a gentler slope and firmer sand. The southeast-facing side is the leeward side, with a steeper slope and softer sand. Additionally, desert plants such as tamarisk, saxaul, and camel thorn all lean toward the southeast. However, it’s important to note that these are general characteristics of desert regions — wind directions vary by area, and so do dune orientations. To make accurate judgments, you must first understand the meteorological and geomorphological conditions of your target area.
2. Learning to Walk in the Desert
Choosing the Right Footwear
To walk comfortably in the desert, you need a suitable pair of shoes. Soft soles are uncomfortable for desert trekking and can cause foot pain over time. Anti-sand gaiters (or snow gaiters) are essential — once sand gets into your shoes, it won’t take long before your feet get rubbed raw.
Learning to Walk with Trekking Poles
Marching while carrying a load and climbing up and down soft sand dunes puts a lot of pressure on your knees and can easily cause injuries. Using trekking poles can reduce knee strain and save a significant amount of energy.
Don’t be afraid to take a detour
The seemingly endless sea of sand is not entirely flat. In the desert, you’ll encounter many large dunes or sand hills—always go around them and avoid attempting to cross steep slopes directly. Steer clear of loose sand on the leeward side and try to walk along the windward side or sand ridges. The windward side is compacted by wind erosion, making it firmer and easier to walk on, thereby conserving energy. In contrast, the leeward side is mostly formed by wind deposition and is looser, causing deeper footprints and greater energy expenditure. If you’re traveling with a camel caravan, following camel tracks can save considerable effort. When exploring the desert, the person leading the way plays an important role—they must find passable routes and adopt a slow pace, taking a 10-minute rest every hour. Typically, a team should not cover more than 20 kilometers in straight-line distance per day.
Travel by day, rest by night to avoid high temperatures
Under direct sunlight, even without movement, the amount of water lost is three times higher than in the shade. In Xinjiang’s Taklamakan Desert, during the hottest season, without water, one could survive for about three days in a shaded area. However, walking under the daytime sun reduces survival time to just one or two days. In special circumstances, you should also learn to use the “travel by night, rest at dawn” method. Additionally, in situations involving intense heat, dehydration, thirst, and anxiety, never be misled by mirages.
3. Camping in the Desert
Camping in the desert differs from camping in other regions. Two key points must usually be considered: First, choose a campsite in a sheltered spot while also avoiding being buried by shifting sand—such locations are often flat areas among sand dunes. Second, never pitch your tent near plants such as tamarisk or populus euphratica, as plant areas often harbor toxic insects. For instance, in the Taklamakan Desert, there is a species called the “Tarim tick,” which typically lives under tamarisk and populus euphratica trees. These ticks carry a virus that, if transmitted through a bite, can lead to a deadly disease (Tarim hemorrhagic fever), often resulting in death within a dozen hours.
In winter, there are no strong winds or venomous insects, so choosing a campsite is more flexible. Winter nights are extremely cold—even double-layer tents may develop thick frost inside. There are many dead trees in the desert, and even during the coldest season, you can build a makeshift “kang” (a heated bed): dig a shallow pit, burn a fire in it, then cover it with sand and sleep on the heated ground. This method is ideal for fully self-supported extreme expeditions, as explorers can go without a tent to reduce weight.
III. Handling Emergency Situations
1. Finding Water
In the desert, extreme heat and drought are the biggest threats to explorers, with most desert tragedies resulting from dehydration and heatstroke. Once you lose your bearings in the desert, securing enough clean drinking water before escaping the predicament is essential—otherwise, survival prospects are slim. There is no surface water in the desert, and digging for it is difficult in most areas. However, deserts are usually basins containing many seasonal riverbeds.
If you spot dense reeds in the desert, it means water can be found underground at a depth of about one meter. If you see needlegrass, dig around two meters down. Tamarisk and camel thorn indicate groundwater at six to eight meters below the surface. Populus euphratica forests suggest groundwater at eight to ten meters deep. In the winter of 1990, a Japanese NHK Broadcasting expedition crossed the Taklamakan Desert from Dayaheyan at the end of the Keriya River using this method to provide water for nearly a hundred camels. They walked for 28 days, dug once for water (a 15-meter-long, five-meter-deep trench), led the camels down to drink, and successfully traversed over 300 kilometers of desert without any support, eventually reaching the Tarim River on the northern edge of the desert.
Additionally, if you come across damp sand or brackish water in the desert, you can dig a hole and cover it with transparent plastic sheeting to create a simple solar still. As the air and soil inside the pit rapidly heat up, steam is generated. When the vapor becomes saturated, it condenses into water droplets on the underside of the plastic, which then drip into a container below, yielding precious water. This method can produce over one liter of distilled freshwater per day. It’s worth noting that most desert groundwater is highly saline or alkaline and not safe for direct human consumption (though camels can drink it), so it must be treated through methods like distillation.
2. Avoiding Sandstorms
Sand and wind movement follow specific patterns. If you encounter a sandstorm in the desert, first assess the escape direction visually. As long as you avoid the storm’s direct path, you can usually avert danger. At the same time, never seek shelter on the leeward side of a dune, as you risk being buried by the storm. The correct approach is to lead your camels to the windward slope and take cover behind them.