Major Deserts of the World
Major Deserts of the World : Antarctica
| Arabian | Atacama
| Chihuahuan | Gobi
| Great Basin | Great
Victoria | Highlands
of Iceland | Kalahari
| Monte | Patagonian
| Sahara | Taklamakan
| Thar
Taklamakan Desert
The Taklamakan is a desert of Central Asia, in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region of the People's Republic of China. It is known as the largest sand-only desert in the world. Some references fancifully state that Taklamakan means "if you go in, you won't come out"; others state that it means "Desert of Death" or "Place of No Return". "Makan" is a Turkic word meaning "place", of Arabic origin: the word may mean something different if treated as original pre-Islamic native Turkic. A more realistic derivation of the meaning should rather be as follows: "takla" has the meaning of "return" or "revolve" in Turkic; "ma" is a suffix of negation; and finally "kan" is a gerund suffix; altogether we obtain the expression that would be understood in Turkic languages as "unreturnable".
Geography
It covers an area of 270,000 km² of the Tarim Basin, extending between roughly 78° to 88° E longitude and 37° to 40° N latitude. It is crossed at its northern and at its southern edge by two branches of the Silk Road. The key oasis towns are Kashgar, Yarkand, and Khotan (Hetian) in the South-West, Kuqa and Turfan in the North, and Loulan and Dunhuang in the East.
The White Jade River flows into the Taklamakan, as do the Yarkant He originating in the Kunlun mountains and the Torkan He from the Tien Shan range.
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