Gobi Rorschach Test

I'm back in civilization, if that is an appropriate description of modern China, after five days in the desert. The Chinese call the south central Gobi the sand sea, and it is one of the most spectacular landscapes I have ever encountered. Endless waves of dunes protect pocket lakes which, having no outlet, are as saline as the Dead Sea. Years of evaporation have concentrated naturally occurring salts within them. Reed-fringed and overgrazed by the goat and camels of the once-nomadic yurt-dwelling Mongols, the lakes, on a still morning, are as enormous mirrors unrolled on the sands.