Taklimakan Desert


Period:October-November 1998

"The desert of the irrevocable death". This is the meaning of the word Taklimakan in the Uyguri language a population that lives in extreme conditions on the border of the desert. To them, even from the Marco Polo age whoever goes in would never come out. In fact none of the numerous caravans that for centuries have traveled on the silk way ever crossed it. The desert is located at north west of the country in the middle of a depression surrounded by the Himalayan Mountains. It is considered the second biggest desert of inhabitable area after the Sahara.
Carla decided to try her hardest challenge: with a backpack weighting 24 kilograms and alone, she wanted to try the crossing by feet from the south side to the north side. She would be the first person in the world to do it.
She leaves from a small town called Seghez situated on the north of Yutian on the southern part of the Taklimakan on October the 26Th assisted as always from her husband and a support team. In the backpack, besides the ultra light tend weighting only 900 grams, the sleeping bag and the cooking equipment made of titanium, there are few high tech clothes, a digital video camera, a photo camera, and a small tripod. Tied to her chest there is also a heart meter to survey the physical strength of the athlete. She keep herself in touch with the base camp with a satellite phone weighting two kilograms and half powered by a solar panel tied to the top of her backpack. To save more weight she would have to feed only on pills and dried high-energy products (the same ones used on space missions) and would have to take 27 pills a day. The total backpack weight is of 18 kilograms with an additional six liters of water.
During the first part of her trip, Carla would walk in the dry bed of the Keriya River which is one of the Ghost Rivers that crosses the desert in the period of the big glaciers melting and she hoped to find some water puddles were refilling her supplies. Sometimes the water was undrinkable by the high concentration of salt, which made her diverge in some other direction to find the precious liquid. As always she carries a GPS to track her direction witch she checked every night before communicating it by satellite phone to the base camp that is following her about 80 kilometers away.
After just few days, a terrible blister on her heel almost made her desist but luckily in the small Daheyan oasis she finds a pair of Chinese shoes that helped her to continue her journey. She walked for 150 kilometers before arriving in the unexplored and hardest part of her challenge. " In front of me I can see the immense stretch of big sand dunes so beautiful to leave me breathless: I ask silently to whom is following from above to give me the strength to keep going, Then out loud I talk to the desert." Please, let me by you".
Between the dunes there is no water. After Carla departure, her assistant friends with a caravan of camels went into the desert to leave her four water supplies of six liters each and that the explorer would have to find following the direction on the GPS and the coordinates given on the phone.
During the entire duration of the trip she would not have any physical contact with her base camp, and if she would miss just one supply leg she would have to quit. The water consumption is relatively low given to the low temperatures (from a maximum of 35 degreases during the day to a minimum of - 12 degreases at night). The worst enemy of Carla was in fact the cold temperature during the night: in the small tend everything became icy and the long 12 hours Chinese nights are becoming a nightmare. For a week she walks up and down from dunes measuring more than hundred meters, similar to big waves in the ocean 360 degreases around, with the support of just a pair of sand rackets and without ever meeting any life forms she reaches every supply station.
After 270 kilometers, Carla arrives at the Mazar Tagh Mountains and to the end of the most dangerous part of the challenge. She was able to find the dry bed of the Hotan, another river and she founded small water puddles in which she could collect some water after breaking the ice on the surface.
She still has to walk for 280 kilometers in an environment full of monotony and against the temperature which was keep getting lower and the icy wind that was following her: the water needs went down to one and a half liter a day. On November 18th after 24 days and 550 kilometers of complete loneliness she arrived at Luo Tuan, a small town located on the northern side of the desert by Aksu were she successfully ends her crossing.
Waiting for her was her husband and the full support team, the Chinese television and several reporters. With them there was also the father of a Chinese kid that gave her some pictures of his son, who died the year before trying to cross the Taklimakan.
With her backpack still on her shoulders, Carla went down on her knees toward the desert and salute it. In the sand during her last night camp she berried a small box with a love and a thank message for the Taklimakan that gave her the permission to realize her dream.