Empty Horizon

I’m in the Tengger desert now taking a camel ride. Very empty place. The sand is wet and air is cool, the sun is blocked. Lunch was a bread thing, banana, some kind of sausage and a nap.
Staring at a horizon of desert dunes I’m thinking of the ocean and looking at endless waves, and thinking about the seminal difference between being lost at sea and lost at land.

…………
Back from the desert trek now. Overall a good experience. Camels are filthy animals. They had their noses pierced with rope to keep them in line, so each stayed as close as possible to the next in front, causing one to be at my ankle the whole time. Going downhill was bumpy and painful. We seemed to be wandering aimlessly at times. It started raining so we stopped to set up camp, and the leader disappeared, returning 30 minutes later with dinner.

It didn’t seem very desert like, we didn’t get very far from factories and roads, and we finished near a giant lake. There were bushes with small, fragrant pink flowers, we broke some down for firewood. One of the guides engaged me in a drinking game of Rock, Paper, Scissors, with cups of Chinese vodka. I ended up a bit drunk, enough to start a political conversation by the campfire, and tell our friend Merrick that North Korea is “bad” and if they don’t change America will have to destroy them, and is capable of doing so very quickly. My travel mates listened in horror.

Riding the camels reminded me of Camel cigarettes, and I began mentally composing an essay about camels, cigarettes, smoker’s cough, pollution in China. I couldn’t think of a specific way to compare the smoker’s cough to Chinese pollution, but thought it could make an interesting story.