Trekking the Gobi Desert 🏜
The massive Gobi Desert can be found in the East part of Asia. It’s famously also located on the epic Silk Road. 🐪
If you love history and majestic sites you must travel The Silk Road. This road played a huge part in connecting the Western World to the Middle East and Asia. Lots of trade and cultural exchange happened here. It was created back in the Han Dynasty (206 BCE-220 CE, ok but that’s a longggg time ago! 😮) Y’all they even found DINOSAUR EGGS in the Gobi Desert. I mean, I didn’t find any but that’s pretty cool! 🦖🥚
The Silk Road is around 4,000 miles long! It’s located in Gansu Province but started in Xi’an, China and ended in Rome!! Is this the longest road in the world? Idk, but whoa that’s massive.
I took this incredible holiday back in October 2020. The country or I should say the world was just getting thru Covid and learning how to deal with it. Looking back I am surprised I didn’t need a Covid test for any part of this trip. 🤔 It was pretty contained in China at the beginning so not much was needed from us in regards to tests or travel history. (Also yes, this is an extremely late blog post so, SORRY!)
In this blog I’m gonna talk about specifically the desert trek and camping that my tour group did!
Our day started at 9am. For this day we had to check out of our hotel as that evening we were camping close to the desert. So our group packed all we needed for our desert trek and overnight stay in the Gobi Desert.
A short 30ish minute ride we arrived in a random side road off the desert. (sounds sketch lol 😅) Here we met with a company that had those sand dune buggies that we would get to ride later.
By 10am we set off for our walk! Let me tell ya…hiking thru the desert is HARD. You’re constantly going up and down the sandy hills but sinking while you’re walking. So you can’t walk up slowly or else it takes more energy for you to pick up your feet. So you gotta be quick!!!
The part of the desert where we were was just us! We couldn’t see anyone for miles!!! I felt like I was in The Prince of Egypt or Aladdin going up and down these massive sand dunes.
An hour into our trek the dune buggies found us and we got to ride in them. It was thrilling! 😂 did I tell my mom? NO! 🙈 The way they glide across the sand and turn corners quickly was so impressive.
What I wore and took on the trek!
⁃ Scarf for sun protection
⁃ Sunglasses 🕶
⁃ UV protective jacket and arm covers
⁃ Hiking pants which I could unzip to become shorts 🩳
⁃ Hiking shoes
⁃ Sand protective shoe covers (tbh they didn’t help all that much. Sand will get anywhere anyways!)
In my backpack!
⁃ Sunblock (duh)
⁃ Hand sanitizer
⁃ Sanitizing wipes
⁃ Toilet paper 🧻
⁃ Hoodie/heat tech (for later in the evening. It’s gets cold in the desert 🥶)
⁃ Extra set of clothes for the next morning
⁃ Snacks! Pretzels, seaweed crackers, energy bars.
⁃ Water
⁃ Portable charger 🔌
⁃ Go-Pro 📷
By around 2pm we made it to the beautiful Crescent Moon Lake. This is what most people who come to the desert look at! It’s a natural oasis surrounded by the desert. And shaped like a half moon, hence its name! 🌙
There are lots of activities you can do here! You can sand sled!! You hike up a small portion of the sand dune and slide down. I wanted to do this but gosh, that 4 hour trek took it out of me and I didn’t have the energy to go back up any hills. 😅
There are helicopter rides here as well which I didn’t do but others in my group did. 🚁
This is where you can also ride camels! There’s a whole section filled with camels just waiting to be partnered. Not gonna lie they smell really bad!
We got our camels around 5pm and rode them around for about 30ish minutes. All the camels are connected to each other so no worries about your camel kidnapping you and running off into the desert. By 6:20pm we had called it a day and headed to our campsite around 10 mins away.
Camping in the “desert” ⛺️
Our camping in the desert was literally a small lil site by the side of the road 😂 it wasn’t anything like I thought of! I thought we’d be emerged in the desert surrounded by huge sand dunes lol. But we weren’t. There were small single tents set up for us. The family who owned the site had a bbq for us that night and then we all sat by the fire and chatted and had tea.
As I said this wasn’t what I expected 😅 so much that 2 people from our group decided it was best for them to get a hotel for the night. Which I don’t blame them! 😂 I did stay the night in the tent though. I was freezing as I didn’t bring enough warm clothes but I made it!
The next morning we asked our tour guide if we could be taken to the hotel to shower and freshen up which he kindly did. After a day in the desert wow it felt so good for a hot shower!
I will also say, that night I was rough. I was extremely sore! And skipped dinner and stretched for about an hour in my hotel room. So don’t forget to stretch or do some yoga!
If you have any questions please ask!!! This was quite a journey!!! And I definitely recommend! Not many people can say they’ve trekked the Gobi Desert! You’ll absolutely leave with some epic memories and stories to tell!
Happy travels!!!
Kitty&Co. 