Tomorrow is desert day!

After an incredibly drawn out 5 days in the desert border town of Hotan, all the supplies have been bought, caches have been dropped in the desert and everything is ready to go.

We were due to hit the desert today but an unfortunate and terrible bout of gastro hit me during the night and by morning i was so dehydrated that i had literally lost kilos! So today is the recovery day where i boost my levels back up, rest and then hit it hard tomorrow.

We have had the most unbelievable luck to meet a couple local boys; yung and tanh. Together they helped us navigate good portions of the desert to drop our supplies out. Though i must mention that after the 6th time i completely lost countat how many times we got bogged. One time we did such a good job that all 4 wheels were completely free of the ground and the toyota was just teetering on its under chassis. 3 hours later and we managed to dig it free!

One other thing we quickly noticed was how fine the sand is. So much so that i would struggle to call it sand and more like a very finely ground flour. Within steps the sand had infiltrated through the fine mesh of our shoes and our toe boxes were full and cramped. Our gaiters were of no match at all for thsse conditions. So far we have managed to recycle some old ration pack packaging and together with a whole bunch of duct tape, come up with a viable solution for the sand intrusion problem.

Anyway here is a sneak preview of what we have coming up tomorrow in the desert.