Hikers set out to walk through Taklimakan Desert

Chinanews, Urumqi, Oct 10 – Eighty-eight Chinese, including those from the mainland, Taiwan and Hong Kong, arrived in Urumqi on Tuesday. They were heading for Khotan to start their journey of passing the Taklimakan Desert on foot. Located in Tarim Basin, Taklimakan Desert extends 1,500 kilometers from west to east and 400 kilometers from north to south between the Tianshan and Kunlun mountain ranges. It covers a total area of 337,600 square kilometers, making it the second largest desert in the world, only next to the Sahara Desert. In Uygur language, Taklimakan means "unable to walk out". Thus the desert is also dubbed "the death sea". The straight-line distance of the forthcoming journey will be 88 kilometers. The journey will start at Daliyabuyi Village and end in Mazhatage Mountain. It takes about two days to pass through the desert by car and on, the whole journey will take about seven days, walking for five or six hours a day. Among the 88 hikers, the oldest is 73 while the youngest is only about 20. To finish the journey, hikers should be able to endure various tough weather conditions like heat, drought, sandstorm, etc. The oldest person in the group, Zong Xianmou, comes from Taiwan. In expressing his wish, the old man said that conquering the "death sea" has been his dream for many years. He believed that he could finish the trip and walked out of the desert in the end.