Taklamakan Desert
The Taklamakan is one of the largest and most dangerous sandy deserts in the world. It covers most of western China's Xinjiang region, surrounded by the highest mountains on Earth. The name "Taklamakan" is sometimes translated as "place of no return" or "you go in and you don't come out", reflecting its grim reputation as a graveyard for travellers. The desert was a vital but treacherous section of the ancient Silk Road.
- Areaapprox. 337,000 km²About the size of Germany
- CountryChinaIn Xinjiang, the country's far west
- TypeSandy desertOne of the largest sand deserts on Earth
- Surrounded byTall mountainsTian Shan, Kunlun, Pamirs
- Famous historyThe Silk RoadTrade route between China and the West
- Modern resourceOil and gasVast reserves recently discovered
Taklamakan compared to other deserts
The Taklamakan is one of the larger sand deserts in the world but is tiny compared to the Sahara. It is the second largest non-polar sand desert.
What is the Taklamakan?
The Taklamakan is a vast sand sea in the Tarim Basin of western China. It is bounded by some of the highest mountains on Earth: the Tian Shan to the north, the Pamirs to the west, the Kunlun and Karakoram to the south. The combination of these mountains creates one of the strongest rain shadows in the world. Moist air from the Indian Ocean is wrung out completely by the Himalayas long before it can reach the Taklamakan, and the desert receives almost no rainfall: less than 10 mm a year in the centre.
The desert is dominated by huge sand dunes, some over 300 metres tall and several kilometres long. The sand sea is so vast and the dunes so massive that they have only recently been crossed by motor vehicles. Traditional caravans always skirted the desert rather than attempting to cross it directly.
The Silk Road
The Taklamakan was a major obstacle on the ancient Silk Road, the trade routes connecting China to the Middle East and Europe. Caravans could not cross the desert directly; instead, two main routes (the Northern Silk Road and the Southern Silk Road) skirted the desert along its northern and southern edges, hopping from oasis to oasis. Oasis cities like Kashgar, Hotan, Kucha and Turpan grew rich from the trade. Modern visitors can still see Buddhist cave temples and other Silk Road heritage at sites like the Kizil Caves and Mogao Caves.
Modern oil and gas
The Taklamakan has become economically important in modern times because vast reserves of oil and natural gas lie beneath the sand. China has invested heavily in developing these reserves, building roads through the desert (including the famous Tarim Desert Highway, the longest road through any sand desert on Earth at 522 km) and oil-pumping infrastructure. The desert oil is now a significant contributor to China's energy supply.
The Uyghurs
The region around the Taklamakan is the historical homeland of the Uyghur people, a Turkic-speaking Muslim group that is the largest ethnic minority in Xinjiang. The Uyghurs have lived around the oases of the Tarim Basin for over 1,000 years. In recent decades, large-scale Han Chinese migration into Xinjiang and Chinese government policies have led to severe ethnic tensions. Reports of mass internment camps and forced cultural assimilation of Uyghurs since around 2017 have drawn international condemnation, although the Chinese government denies any wrongdoing.
Deeper dive: the Tarim Basin, the mummies and the modern Uyghur situation
The Tarim Basin, which contains the Taklamakan, is one of the largest endorheic (closed) basins on Earth. The basin is surrounded by mountains so tall that no rivers flow out; water that enters the basin either evaporates or sinks into the sand. The Tarim River, which runs along the northern edge of the desert, used to flow to Lop Nur (a large salt lake) before disappearing. The lake has now mostly dried up, partly because Chinese irrigation has diverted the river's water to agriculture. The basin sits at relatively low elevation (around 1,000 m) despite being surrounded by 5,000 to 7,000 metre mountains, which traps heat in summer and creates one of the hottest places in China.
The Tarim Basin mummies are some of the most remarkable archaeological finds of the 20th century. Over 200 naturally preserved mummies dating from approx. 2000 BC to 200 AD have been found in the salty desert sands. The oldest and most famous, including the so-called "Loulan Beauty", have notably European-looking features and have been associated through DNA studies with ancient populations from Siberia and the steppes. The mummies challenge the simple picture of separate eastern and western Eurasian populations and suggest a much more complex picture of human movement and interaction across the Eurasian heartland thousands of years ago. The discoveries have, however, become politically sensitive in modern China, where the Chinese government prefers archaeological narratives that emphasise long-standing Chinese presence in Xinjiang.
The modern situation in Xinjiang is among the most internationally contentious human rights issues of recent years. Since around 2017, the Chinese government has built an extensive network of detention facilities (which Beijing calls "vocational training centres" but which critics describe as concentration camps) in which an estimated 800,000 to 1.8 million Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities have been detained at various times. Reports describe forced political indoctrination, restrictions on religious practice, mass surveillance, family separation and forced labour. The Chinese government denies these characterisations and presents the policies as counter-terrorism measures. Multiple Western governments have imposed sanctions in response, and the situation remains a major source of international tension.
The country is China. The other great central Asian desert is the Gobi.