Sand

What would a desert be without sand? The Gobi desert boasts so many different types of scenery that I wasn't surprised when the dry dirt under our wheels began to be pushed aside by rising lumps of sand and eventually replaced by it.

The Khongoryn Els stretch 100 km and are 12 km wide. They spring up from a valley of desert shrubs and grazing sheep and camels and rise naked with knife-edge ridges toward pointed peaks. "They don't look so daunting," I said to John. I could see the jagged peaks of the mountain range we had just left poking between two shifting sand peaks. There seemed a sense of finality to the dunes. I could cross those.

But I took back those words when we started up them. John picked a point in the sky (not the smallest point, not the middle point, but the highest point - that's my John) and we slogged upward. From the top of that high point I could barely see the van, an insigificant spec.

We hung around up there for awhile, playing who can roll their spit ball the furtherest down the slope. We pushed the sand down in cascading sheets that picked up momentum as they shifted and sent an entire mountain side of sand collapsing in on itself. "We've ruined the dunes!" I yelled. But the footprints we had made just minutes before were already filled up and by time we got half way back to the van, our destroyed peak had a new ridge along its back.

We had sand everywhere, in our pants, in our toes, in our teeth; and later unfortunately we also had sand up to our wheel-wells. On our way to find a camping spot we got to experience one desert adventure I could have lived without. Butar turned off a dirt track and plowed all four thousand pounds of metal straight into the sand.

My first approach on how to handle the situation wouldn't have involved pouring the contents of our 50 liter water jug into the holes beneath our wheels in an effort to harden the sand. Nor would I have repeatedly spun my wheels in frustration. But that is what Butar did. "Stop!" John yelled. He opened the door. The rear wheel was gone, sunk in sand.

Our suggestions in English to let us get out of the van to reduce the weight, to dig out, to push, were lost on Mongolian ears. Already Butar had started and stopped so many times that the engine was protesting against starting again.

John took command. "This is what we do." He pointed to Butar. "I shovel. Janet directs and you drive on her signal." Butar's command of body language must have been good enough because he understood and after twenty minutes of digging and pushing and grunting, we were free. Unfortunately we were also out 90% of our water.

We didn't camp on the dunes as we had wanted. We told Butar that further north was fine. And it did prove to be a good choice since the sunset we got to see that spread across the dunes was fantastic. We all stood in silence and watched the dunes turn orange and then green. The mountains behind them exploded into flaming red and then faded into a patchwork of blue and pink. A few gazelles flew by us as the clouds spilled fans of pink and blue toward the ground. The sun flattened itself against the horizon and then in a last gasp ringed the clouds in fire.