I didn’t realize that I’d never seen a desert until I was rocking in the ski-lift and in front of my eyes were miles and miles of sand dunes against clear blue sky. It was disheartening that I felt I’d seen it before, just from screen savers and the discovery channel. Our tour took us to somewhat of an amusement park on the top of the dunes.
After the initial ski lift we were instructed (by pantomime, of course) to put on “sand socks.” These are brightly colored sacks of thick cloth with ties around the ankle and top, which land just below the knee. I suppose that these are to help keep the sand out of our shoes, and apparently we paid for them in our package, but I was ready to don them for their sexual appeal and fashion statement alone.
In the first 20 min. I was able to realize my life dream of riding a camel. The scariest part is when they stand up and sit down with you on them, rocking sharply forward and then dropping back like a boat in tumultuous water. The camels brought us to the train, which was the most surreal of the excursions. Watching the red and black train coming around the sand dune against the bright blue sky, its tracks covered completely, looked like a sight from a DreamWorks Production. I was half-waiting for complementary soft music and credits to appear on the scene.
The train brought us to the Gallery of Sand Art, which consisted of several hill-sized, sand-castles made into scenes with Buddha and Genghis Khan. In one, the duo was placed inside a convertible, running into some type of creatures who were plastered to the front bumper. I’ll never understand art.
We were seriously tempted to rent a 4 by 4, but were too worried for our lives without being able to hear the instructions like, “Stay on this side of that dune” or “This is how you stop.” Instead we got on this boat-shaped 40-passenger vehicle and went “Sand Surfing”, which felt like being on a roller coaster through sand dunes. It had been some time since I’d been on an actual roller coaster, and this one, not having any secure metal base or track (save a rough path made by the wheels of previous vehicles), it took a while for my stomach to fall back in to place.
To exit, I stood on the edge of an 8-story-high sand dune with a 2 foot plastic sled. I made it down with my feet on the front bar and my hands trailing behind me in an attempt to control my pace. I figured this out by watching others, such as the 5 yr-old girl who went before me. Her mother watched, carelessly, as her young one went hurling down eight stories. (I thought, “Please give me some of that ease and trust in the world so that I may not smother my own potential future child with my hereditary anxiety.)
Greatest Success of the Desert: Not being the last tourists back on the bus, even without being able to decipher when exactly we were leaving.
Things I’m getting too used to in China: Talking about anything I think out loud as if I’m invisible. We found out (or rather it was revealed to us) only by the end of our trip, that quite a few of our group members speak some English: even that cranky, complaining woman I was always trying to avoid. Whoops!
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