Gobi Desert

Diverse climate and vegetation, rich history and home to many animals, Gobi is the largest desert in Asia. Gobi spans Mongolia and China in a thousand miles. For centuries it has represented a piece of the history of each countries in preventing invasion as a natural stronghold. Although men like Genghis Khan were able to weather the might of Gobi.

Gobi in Mongolian means the waterless place. But it isn’t just made of sand dunes or hot weather. It has small sand with Beautiful dunes like the Khongoryn Els nicknamed singing sands because of  sounds produced when there is a shifting of sand.

In fact, generally a desert isn’t defined by temperature but the amount of rainfall. It has few trees despite being a desert.

Gobi itself has cold temperature with snowfall in winter and is increasingly hot in summer.

The desert has 5 regions;

• The Alaskan plateau
• Eastern Gobi desert steppe semi desert
• The Gobi lakes valley desert steppe
• Dzungarian basin semi desert
• Tian Shan range

Dinosaur eggs were first found in Gobi. The desert has some of the best preserved dinosaur fossils in the world, this is a main attraction for tourists.

There are beautiful oases where cities were built along the Silk Road as stopover for merchants.  

Also the desert has diverse living organisms from plants to animals to humans who live in the desert.

The desert is expanding. But efforts of the Chinese government in afforestation has produced good results.