For centuries, the "Silk Road" skirted the edge of the Taklamakan desert to north and south, following the lines of the isolated oasis towns. The Taklamakan was to the Chinese, "the desert of death", which "you go in but you never come out". This volume retraces the adventures of Charles Blackmore and his companions as they cross the Taklamakan, overcoming both scorching heat and bitter cold, surviving dysentry and water shortages and relentlessly attacking the endless and intimidating sand dunes.