Mysteries of the Gobi

The Gobi is the largest, coldest and driest desert in Asia. Once part of the great Mongol Empire and home to many of the legendary Silk Road cities, its inhospitable sands have been inhabited for centuries and parts of it have been crossed by some of history’s most famed explorers. Despite this, the Gobi remains a place of mystery. Its shifting sands conceal ancient cities, 3,000-year-old mummies, dinosaur bones and areas where no man has set foot. It is also the last place on earth where the wild Bactrian camel clings to survival, its fragile habitat threatened by poachers and development.

With the conservation of this elusive creature in mind, John Hare was inspired to venture with domestic Bactrian camels, Chinese scientists and Kazakh herdsmen into the wildest parts of the Chinese Gobi on an expedition during which they crossed a hundred miles of sand dunes, unexplored in recorded history. Several weeks into the journey, Hare and the team discovered, in two unmapped valleys, a population of wildlife with no experience of man. Interwoven with the account of his remarkable journey, Hare tells, for the first time, the story of an epic migration made by Kazakh nomads in flight from Chinese communists through what would become the infamous Chinese nuclear testing ground. He also describes the historic and current tensions between the Chinese and the indigenous Uighur population of Xinjiang. A blend of history and high adventure, discovery and conservation, Mysteries of the Gobi is a unique and compelling account of modern-day exploration.