Badain Jaran Desert Journey: 4 Days Among the Megadunes and Lakes

Meet in Alxa Right Banner town for the briefing: water discipline, the day's wind forecast, how we travel in convoy and why. Then the 4WDs take the southern tracks into the sand, and within an hour the world is dunes to every horizon.

First camp goes up in the corridor the drivers choose, on sand firm enough and screened from the wind. Dinner over coals; then the desert's real show starts — the sky. With the nearest town hours behind, the Milky Way runs edge to edge, and your guide will read the Mongolian star names off for you.

A full desert day on the tracks between the lakes: Yinderitu lake and its spring-fed freshwater pool, the swans and reeds that survive on water which fell as rain on distant mountains and moved underground for decades before surfacing here. The drivers time the crossings between the dune walls for the firm sand.

Climb one of the mid-height ridges in the late afternoon — an hour of switchbacking on the leeward face — and sit at the top while the dune field changes colour through every shade of red gold. Second camp, same rhythm: fire, food, stars, and the strange deep silence of sand country at night.

Pre-dawn start for Bilutu, the giant — the world's tallest stationary dune. The climb from the lake side is three hours of one step up, half a step down; the reward is sunrise across the whole dune-and-lake chessboard, Gobi to the north, mountains hazed to the south.

Descend the slip face — eight running steps and you are down in twenty seconds — and drive to Badain Jaran temple, the 1755 monastery in the desert's heart. The resident lamas will make tea; the white pagoda and the prayer flags against the dunes are the image you will keep. Out via the eastern tracks to a lodge at the edge for the last night, with a real shower and a dinner that tastes of everything.

An easy morning at the desert's edge — the interpretive centre explains the geology you have been living in, and the town's camel-milk products are worth trying — then transfer onward, to Zhangye and the Hexi corridor by road, or by way of Jinchang and the rail line east.