tongguzbasti

Example Sentences

• "In order to find clues as to how they lived it might be reasonable to visit the most primitive and isolated oasis community in the Tarim Basin. Arguably this is the village of Tongguzbasti which lies in the delta of the Keriya River, in the middle of the Taklamakan desert[...]"
• "Added to the party later were the Chinese guide who had crossed the desert in Blackmore's expedition, and two Chinese cooks. At Tongguzbasti ("the boar trampled"), a remote settlement where the Keriya River trickles away into the sand, we recruited 24 camels, five Uighur camel drivers and the headman's eight-year-old son."
• "'Oh, yes. A man was brought to us about a year ago. There'd been a big storm along the southern sector of the Taklamakan. It went on for four or five days. This man was a goatherd from Tongguzbasti. He'd gone out into the desert in search of tamarisk, along with a camel for the load. At midday he had some bread and water and lay down for a sleep. When he woke there was a storm the like of which he'd never seen before. There was nothing for it but to hunker down and make the best of it; but at some point - whether it was day or night he couldn't say - he found himself on his feet, shouting and screaming at the noise, and walking for what must have been miles.'"
• "The fifty villagers of Tongguzbasti ("The invading boar") live in a thicket behind a stockade which protects them from the wind and sand."
• "A week into the trip Korbel told me I was riding well, no trouble at all for him, so we would detour a little to the east, toward an oasis called Tongguzbasti. We would soon pick up a very old route, he told me, one that ran between the Khotan, which we had by then gained, and another riverbed, the Keriya. Along the way we would see something."
• "The tiny Uighur settlement of Tongguzbasti, 170km (102 miles) north of Keriya beside the rapidly diminishing Keriya Dariya, must rank as one of the most remote places in Xinjiang. It is said to stand on the ruins of the lost city of Keladun, and artefacts dating from the Han Dynasty (206 BC-AD 222) have been found here. Today about 100 families of Keriya Uighur live here in almost complete isolation."