TAKLAMAKAN DESERT

The Taklamakan Desert, also known as Taklimakan and Teklimakan, is a desert in southwest Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, northwest China. It is bounded by the Kunlun Mountains to the south, the Pamir Mountains and Tian Shan ancient Mount Imeon to the west and north, and the Gobi Desert to the east.

The name may be an Uyghur borrowing of the Arabic tark, "to leave alone/out/behind, relinquish, abandon" + makan, "place". Another plausible explanation suggests it is derived from Turki taqlar makan, describing "the place of ruins".The Taklamakan Desert has an area of 337,000 km2 130,116 sq. mi., and includes the Tarim Basin, which is 1,000 kilometres 620 mi long and 400 kilometres 250 mi wide. It is crossed at its northern and at its southern edge by two branches of the Silk Road as travelers sought to avoid the arid wasteland. It is the world's second largest shifting sand desert with about 85% made up of shifting sand dunes ranking 18th in size in a ranking of the world's largest non-polar deserts.

Some geographers and ecologists prefer to regard the Taklamakan Desert as separate and independent from the Gobi Desert region to its east.citation needed

In recent years, the People's Republic of China has constructed a cross-desert highway that links the cities of Hotan on the southern edge and Luntai on the northern edge. In recent years, the desert has expanded in someBecause it lies in the rain shadow of the Himalayas,Taklamakan is a paradigmatic cold desert climate. Given its relative proximity with the cold to frigid air masses in Siberia, extreme lows are recorded in wintertime, sometimes well below −20 °C −4 °F. During the 2008 Chinese winter storms episode, the Taklamakan was reported to be covered for the first time in its entirety with a thin layer of snow reaching 4 centimetres 1.6 in, with a temperature of −26.1 °C −15 °F in some observatories.

Its extreme inland position, virtually in the very heartland of Asia and thousands of kilometres from any open body of water, accounts for the cold character of its nights even during summertime.There is very little water in the desert and it is hazardous to cross. Merchant caravans on the Silk Road would stop for relief at the thriving oasis towns. It was in close proximity to many of the ancient civilizations—to the Northwest is the Amu Darya basin, to the Southwest the Afghanistan mountain passes lead to Iran and India, to the East is China, and even to the North can be found ancient towns like Almaty.

The key oasis towns, watered by rainfall from the mountains, were Kashgar, Marin, Niya, Yarkand, and Khotan Hetian to the south, Kuqa and Turpan in the north, and Loulan and Dunhuang in the east.[6] Now many, such as Marin and Gaochang, are ruined cities in sparsely inhabited areas in the Xinjiang Autonomous Region of the People's Republic of China.