Haved spent the last five days crossing the Taklamakan desert and have now arrived in Turpan, the hottest city in China. We're lucky, the temperature is still in the low thirties, reaching 35 degrees yesterday. The real heat is expected to arrive in two weeks time (when we will hopefully be ensconed in air-conditioned, five star luxury in Xi'an). The Taklamakan desert is the flattest and wettest we've yet encountered. We've been rained on every night and our first night saw us caught up in a rain/sandstorm which blew away one of the tents. That prompted a 1.5km dash into the desert by three of us to retrieve it. Tomorrow we're off into the desert again, driving south east towards Dunhuang, which we should reach in two days time. With our current record, the citizens of Dunhuang should start preparing their flood defences.