By Tughluk A. Osman

Farmers waiting for the long distance bus to take them to the Korla city. Usually it is women or elders who sell farm product in the city while man and young work in the farm to grow farm product.

At the entrance of the Tarim Desert Highway. The construction of ghe highway started in 1993 and finished in 1995. It cuts through the Taklimakan desert right in the middle. It is 552 kilo meters long and said to be the longest desert highways ever build in the world. You may drive as fast as 80 miles per hour, but be careful not to be caught by police).

'S' is the abbreviation of 'Sha Mo' ( desert in Chinese ). It makes
me wonder why it didn't use the letter 'K' ( kumluk in Uighur ).

We entered the 'Tarim Desert Highway' at 11:30am, filled our tank
with #93 gas and started our journey to go across the Taklimakan desert. Luckly, it was a cloudy day and we didn't experience the extremely hot desert temperature.

Desert forest - the special kind of desert tree that withstand dry and arid weather. The tree has roots deep into the ground and feeds itself with underground water. It was told that whenever there is tree, there is water several meters underneath.

The part of Tarim river that has water, yes, there are part of the river without any water.

(To be continued)

Article added by Tughluk on Saturday, September 1, 2007