IT is the sort of journey that only madmen or masochists should undertake. An 80-day, 1,120-kilometre trek across the barren centre of the Taklimakan desert in China, one of the world's great surviving wildernesses.
It is a place of violent dust storms, buried oases, and harsh temperatures that swing from sub zero at dawn to 50 degrees Celsius at noon.
To survive, its conquerors must have skills of the navigator, the scientist, the doctor and scholar, and the fitness to dig for water for hours, rein in recalcitrant camels, and endure the privations of no washing facilities or a normal diet for almost three months.
Retired British Army Major Charles Blackmore, 35, however, sees it differently. The prospect of 80 days with three sand encrusted adventurers, and 30 foul smelling camels as travelling companions on the forthcoming British Taklimakan Desert Crossing 1993expedition in Xinjian province is a challenge impossible to resist.
For him, it is history in the making. He and his team will be attempting to make the first complete crossing of the treacherous Taklimakan, whose name translates in the local Uygur language as: ''You go in, but you do not come out'', on a route the Chinese have been skirting for centuries.
Locals always chose to go around the bottom of the bottom of the desert, on the Southern Silk Road, avoiding like the plague the centre of the desert, which Blackmore's team will attempt.