Takla Makan Desert

Travelers on the Silk Road had to cross the Takla Makan desert, a bleak region of drifting sand dunes in northwestern China. The Takla Makan Desert, the center of Tarim Basin in China's Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, is known as the Sea of Death from which nobody can escape. In this huge, barely inhabited desert, streams flow into the basin losing them and evaporate, never reach the sea. Meanwhile, poisonous snakes and frequent sand storms are always experienced, and explorers have to bear lots of tortures such as water shortage and great temperature difference between boiling heat and freezing cold from day to night.