Taklamakan

Proper noun

Taklamakan

1. A cold desert in the Xinjiang autonomous region, China, the largest desert entirely contained in China.
   • Surrounding the Taklamakan on three sides are some of the highest mountain ranges in the world, with the Gobi desert blocking the fourth. Thus even the approaches to it are dangerous. Many travellers have perished on the icy passes which lead down to it from Tibet, Kashmir, Afghanistan and Russia...
   • No traveller has a good word to say for the Taklamakan. Sven Hedin, one of the few Europeans to have crossed it, called it ‘the worst and most dangerous desert in the world’. Stein, who came to know it even better, considered the deserts of Arabia 'tame' by comparison. Sir Percy Sykes, the...
   • Apart from the more obvious perils, such as losing one’s way and dying of thirst, the Taklamakan has special horrors to inflict on those who trespass there. In his book Buried Treasures of Chinese Turkestan, von Le Coq describes the nightmare of being caught in that terror of all caravans, the...1980, Peter Hopkirk, Foreign Devils on the Silk Road, Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, published 1984, →ISBN, →LCCN, →OCLC, pages 9–10

   Synonyms:

   Taklamakan Desert