Hong Kong adventurer crossing China desert pushes on despite major setback
Halfway into his quest to cross China’s Taklamakan desert, a run-in with local authorities threatened to derail Rob Lilwall’s efforts – until he dug deep to find the resilience to continue
The desert is watching me. It is hard to find words for the place. Ancient, vast, timeless, epic, still, spiritual, menacing, consuming, other worldly ... Mars-like? As I attempt to walk solo across the Taklamakan desert in China’s wild west Xinjiang region, I have been almost perpetually out of my comfort zone.
I’ve had to carry up to 35kg across the edge of the desert in my rucksack in the intense heat, swim 12 times across a fast-flowing river to get my gear across, haul a cart with beach wheels that weighs up to 150kg through massive dunes (realising the load was too heavy for such dunes and retreating to find a better route). It has probably felt like the longest seven weeks of my life, and I now have just less than four weeks to go.
In week five, since my last update, I was thrilled to survive eight days of deep desert, following a series of valleys hemmed in at each end by huge dunes. One evening I saw a wall of sand billowing up and filling the sky behind me. I quickly threw up my tent but by the time the sandstorm reached me, although visibility was reduced to 10 metres, the wind wasn’t strong enough to do any damage. I also saw some wild camels, who ran off when they spotted me.
Although this section was hard, it felt like maybe I was starting to get the hang of things. But then, last week, after successfully emerging onto a road after my eight days alone, I unexpectedly suffered my greatest setback so far.
