Kubuqi desert: A really long walk…
Just at a month since I made this trip north into inner-Mongolia I finally have a collection of images and a little story to share about the experience.
For the Chinese national holiday a group of hikers from Jiujiang traveled north to inner-Mongolia to hike the
Kubuqi Desert. This is how it happened…Every year at the end of September the Chinese celebrate Golden Week. It is their national holiday celebrating the establishment of the Peoples Republic of China in 1949. Last year I took a three day trip to Shanghai and learned a valuable, though not always adhered to, lesson about train travel in China. This year I went with a group of hikers from Jiujiang for a three day trek across the desert.Camping over here is not as easy as just getting in a car and driving to the nearest trailhead. For the Chinese it may be that easy but not for me. I needed an opportunity to link up with a group of people with similar interests as mine in order to fulfill my interest in outdoor activities. Camping, hiking, outdoor recreation is a newly developing interest here in China. Many people consider it too dangerous or simply not productive so they do not consider it worth attention.In Jiujiang there are less than a handful of outdoor recreation stores but it was in one of them that I came to meet Feng Zhi Yi, who manages an outdoor interest group. Throughout the year this group of people will get together for many outdoor sports. For the holiday week they arranged a trip to hike the Kubuqi desert in inner-Mongolia.There were 13 in our group and we left Sunday afternoon September 28th on a train from Jiujiang to Beijing on the first leg of the 20+ hour trip to Baotou, the city at one edge of the Kubuqi desert and our destination city. [full story]
