MaxedOutMama

During catastrophic droughts, herdsmen may lose all of their cattle, sheep, and goats, while 80 percent of the camels will survive, owing to the camel's ability to conserve water and tolerate dehydration. In severe heat a camel survives four to seven days without drinking, but it can go 10 months without drinking at all if it is not working and the forage contains enough moisture. Even salty water can be tolerated, and between drinks it forages far from oases to find food unavailable to other livestock. The body rehydrates within minutes of a long drink, absorbing over 100 litres (25 gallons) in 5–10 minutes. Cattle could not tolerate such a sudden dilution of the blood because their red blood cells would burst under the osmotic stress; camel erythrocyte membranes are viscous, which permits swelling.

In Hongliugou a black sandstorm ("black" because of the very low visibility) scatters our hired camels in all directions. I am reminded that two years earlier we had a close call when, deep in the desert, all but two of our sixteen camels disappeared in a nighttime sandstorm. We were 175 miles from our base camp, and the last water source we had passed was a three days' walk away. On the basis of our water supply, we calculated that we had only six days to find our camels before we would be forced to head back on foot.

...we'd just as soon not stay long at Wutong: it is plagued with huge, aggressive ticks that, responding to vibrations caused by our motion, scurry up our legs to seek out warm, moist recesses.

The formidable mosquitoes that inhabit Many Rat Hole Valley deserve to have it rechristened in their name. After we have camped there an extra day while the Professor seeks a possible vehicular route to another valley along our itinerary, my swollen hands resemble those of a prizefighter and my left eye is almost closed.

...we camp in a hollow in one of the dunes, supremely thankful that a sandstorm has not blown up. I forget my burned feet and swollen hands when Li Weidong finds the energy to serve up handmade noodles with salt mutton. Zhao Ziyun burps with satisfaction as he scrapes the battered cooking pot with his chopsticks. "It's better than eating camels," he says. Happy and replete, knowing we are camped where no one else has set foot in recent history, I fall asleep watching countless satellites winking their way around the globe.

A short, intense evening sandstorm scatters our banquet and forces us prematurely into flapping, sand-filled tents. The violent wind turns to rain, then to hail, and finally to snow. Overnight the desert turns white. Those of us who have crossed the sand dunes realize how truly lucky we have been. Had the weather behaved differently, we might have been stranded long enough to run out of water, and we might not have lived to keep our rendezvous with the Professor.