Kashgar - The Taklamakan Desert and Camel Trek, Part 2

So what happened next?

We rode the camels.

And then, after a while, the situation was that we were still riding camels.

So we rode the camels further into the abyss.

Then after about two hours of riding the camels, we were still riding camels.

And then after that, we rode the camels for about another two hours.

And then I totally cramped up and couldn’t feel my legs or ass, and nearly fell off my camel.

Here is what I learnt from the experience: don’t ride a camel for four hours straight if you’ve never ridden a camel before in your life.

   

   

So I guess I’m at a bit of a loss for what to say about the desert. You know, as a destination. 

      “What is it like, Bri?”
Well, it’s sandy.

      “Cool. Anything else?”
Okay. Seriously then… it’s mesmerising.

   

   

When you descend one dune, and have not yet risen the next, and there is nothing around you but sand, you feel that feeling you get when you look up at the stars. Absolute insignificance – like the sand could swallow you up in any second, and you would be powerless to stop it. Every dune comes together to create this insurmountable area of void where there is so little life, and yet so much power.

When the wind blows and the dunes move they become waves, and you feel as though you are on a boat, in the middle of a vast and frightening ocean. You’re camel carries you in a slow, rocking motion, and you must look up to the sky to guide you. The similarities are uncanny. One place constructed of water, and the other devoid of it. Perhaps the strongest feeling to connect the two, however, is that as a human being, you are in a place almost completely out of your control. To an untrained eye, the wind can swoop in, or the moon can pull the tide out, and you’ll be gone. Just as the water and the deep planetary magnets control the ocean, the sky and the sand rule together to create the desert.

  

It is a place of serenity and yet absolute danger. Being in the middle of it is like a long, slow-motion sky dive. You’ve  jumped, and you’re pretty sure that the parachute will open, but something about the experience still makes you question your existence. What if it doesn’t open. The last few seconds of a falling skydivers life - don’t we always wonder what they think? Being in the middle of the desert gives you hours to think about it. As though those few seconds could be pulled like toffee, until you had plenty of seconds. Enough second, even, to come to certain realisations normally reserved for those near to death. 

   

 

 

  

It’s the deep kind of self-reflective thought that only a long train ride can induce, but intensified a thousand-fold, because there is nothing else to look at. As far as the eye can see - nothing but sand dunes that move like puzzles, and the sun that moves across the sky, and the occasional small lizard that scampers with silly hot feet. There is no external stimulation that can be pinpointed for the origins of the thoughts that arise when you are thinking in the desert. There is no catalyst for the wonderings, aside from your very self. The things you think about in themselves are definitions of who you are, let alone what you think about those things. Do you sit in the desert and deconstruct a failed romance? Do you sit in the desert and deconstruct your life goals? Do you sit in the desert and deconstruct Derrida and the creation of the very language with which you think and deconstruct? The desert confronts you with yourself. And at no time is this more true, than at night.

   

  

As though the desert itself wasn’t enough to make you feel small, the desert as a carpet with a thick velvet ceiling twinkling the brightest you have ever seen anything, will make you feel as though you never even existed at all. Aside from being in the middle of the ocean, there is not place in the world where you will see brighter stars, than in the desert on a clear night. They shone down, and to look at them was like looking into thousands of tiny midday suns. Even the smallest ones were definite in their shine. And the bigger ones burnt so bright they could have been flaming planets.

If I’m honest, I was kind of crying when I looked up at it. I just felt so at peace. It was as though I could feel the centuries, and I could feel the story of the earth, and I could feel time, and everything made sense. All of it was perfectly clear. There was nothing in my head to confuse the message because I just knew absolutely nothing. It was all feel. Like something much more important than myself.

  

  

I’m glad the notion didn’t strike me in a chapel, or I might have been “born again”, to coin that awkward religious phrase. As it stands though, I came away from the experience with a wonderful assurance of how profoundly ignorant I am. There is nothing that I, as a human, could ever even begin to truly comprehend about the universe, other than that which pertains to relatively insignificant and regular human existence.

It’s a miraculous thing, to be reminded of how small you are, and I recommend it to anyone suffering from a feeling of being cluttered-in-the-brain.

You don’t necessarily have to go to the middle of nowhere. Take a trip to the beach and swim in an ocean that might drown you. Take a drive into the countryside that could envelope and disappear you. Then wait until night time, and look at the stars until you can’t bear it. I can guarantee that something profound will happen to you – even if it’s just an actually good night’s sleep for the first time in a while.

     

#examscangodieinahole

I just have to say that I'm in exams right now, and I feel like I'm bashing my head against my textbooks like one of those stupid annoying flies banging against a closed window.

My point being, poise will be back in full (read: daily) swing on Saturday.

Thanks for stickin' 'round.

Kashgar – The Taklamakan Desert and Camel Trek, Part 1

In Kashgar, in the hostel, in our room, we woke up late and the sun was high in the sky, sizzling down on an otherwise chilly day. All the other people in our bunk room had already left, a testament both to the late hour and the nature of the people who travel to Kashgar. In any case, the situation afforded us a nice few hours to collect and compose ourselves before our guide was to meet us. A venture out into the old town got us to the tea house – the perfect place to ease into the rhythm of Kashgar. Sitting on the balcony, we talked about what we thought the day would present us with, and laughed at all the terrible hypotheticals our wild imaginations were concocting. A desert – in China. Who’da thunk it? Not me, that’s for sure. This time last year I would have laughed at (read: stared skeptically/quizzically at) anyone who tried to tell me that there was a massive dessert in the middle of China. But there is. The Taklamakan Desert, to be precise.

I look down at the Kashgar I have come to love, and think about how I never could have conceptualised a place like this to really exist, let alone in China. Just another reminder that I still know absolutely nothing about the world. I sigh. Maybe one day I’ll be one of those wise-but-silent people who can sit quietly and just trust the fact that everybody knows they’re thinking the right thing. Those people are so awesome. I think maybe I’ll approach that plane of awesomeness in about……. two more decades. Or four. Hell, if I can reach that nirvana land of cleverness before I die, then I’ll be more than happy. Life mission accomplished: to be wise.

I digress. We finished two pots of tea and strolled through the crowds back to the hostel, where we sat on the floor pillows around the downstairs courtyard, and munched away happily on (surprise, surprise) bread and apples. Ten minutes later our trek guide arrived ten minutes early, and we were off. Off to where? Off to make new camel friends and then ride in between their humps into a place where humans aren’t supposed to survive.

It’s gonna be magical!

The drive to get from Kashgar to the edge of the desert was about 3 hours. I think. I could be totally wrong because I was just so darn excited the whole dang time that I wasn’t keeping track of the ticking hours. It was a while though, because the Uyghur music CD we were listening to on the trip repeated itself several times. Not complaining! It was authentic! (Read: Added to the experience of driving along some of the most beautiful scenery in the world but I’m not gonna find that shit on iTunes.)

Alright, so we pull into a deserted-looking driveway that seemed to have just materialised out of nowhere. Ticket formalities were adhered to, and we drove further into the grounds of what looked like a post-apocalyptic version of a Xinjiang country club. Totally wack. The place was totally, absolutely wickety-wack. There were overgrown and awkward lawn sections in places that were clearly supposed to be hedges, there were freaky statues/plastic sculpture things of animals with kind of melted faces, everything that was supposed to be metal was rusted. The driveway turned and opened up to face a big lake, which was surprising considering we thought we were going on a desert trek. Turns out this place was a kind of natural oasis before it was developed (and then runover with zombies, right? No, but looks like it-) into a kind of weekend getaway place for rich folks.  

What is left around the lake now, is a big slide sitting about a hundreds meters from the edge of the water, a mini-jetty surrounded with half-sunken boats, and a rusty shed full of strange sand-suitable vehicles. Predictably, the small number of people present on the property were all around that shed, lining up for what appeared to be crazy-fast drives around the edge of the desert. It did look cool, I’m not gonna lie. They were those open-roofed Jeep kinds of thing, with roll cages and safety belts that go in a cross over your chest like a rally driver. But no! It was not to be! This was not why we came to the fame Taklamakan desert! We came for the true/real/genuine experience of riding camels, and we stick to our guns. (Read: we only didn’t do it because they wouldn’t let you drive yourself. Which now that I think about it is probably a very good thing.)

So anyways, we moved upwards (literally, up the hill) and onwards, to meet our trek guide and our new humpback buddies.

Ok. So the first thing you need to know about camels, IS THAT THEY LOOK FUCKING HILARIOUS!!!

ALL THE TIME!!!

To begin with, humps. I DON’T EVEN NEED TO SAY ANY MORE. HUMPS!!! They are surprisingly fluffy, though. Really, I mean, almost plush.

Seriously, I’m ending this first part of the story here, just so that you have time to digest how awesome camels are. I mean, come on. I’ve rode horses a few times before, and I really loved it, but I think maybe I am a camel kid at heart. There is something really majestic AWESOME about these creatures. Apart from when they spit, which is SERIOUSLY GROSS AND DISGUSTING. Also, if they have to pee when they are sitting down, they kind of pee all over their own legs. Lol, that’s some silly animal design right there, creatoroftheuniverse – what were you thinking? Also, they look eternally and simultaneously perplexed, bored, and kind of ugly. I could make jokes associating camels to British people, because they both share shocking lack of dental hygiene, but camels take the bad-teeth thing to a whole new level. I mean, of course it doesn’t help that they have bottle caps stuck through their noses, but there really isn’t an excuse for how ridiculous these animals are in general.

Definitely. Creatoroftheuniverse must have fallen-asleep-at-the-wheel when these guys came off the conveyor belt. Or ran out of that fancy being-making-clay options, and then had too many beers and mooshed the leftovers all together then accidentally sat on it all. Okay metaphor too far, but however these things came to be, you have to agree, that they are a strange species.  

And I'll also just leave you with this photo to prove how hot we are. TWINS!