Walking In The Gobi Desert
Peak School, Isabelle Baillache, Fiction: Group 2
I
t was finally here, my trip to the Gobi Desert. I was all packed. So with a courageous heart
and excitement burning through me I left and travelled far away from the home I loved, my
friends and my family. I was headed for the Gobi Desert.
My name is Alice, Alice May. I come from England and I am about to turn 22. When I
was in high school I was in EVERY sports team and now I am planning to be an explorer.
My plan was to be dropped off in the heart of the Gobi Desert and to travel to the other side.
I knew it would take months to do but I was hungry for adventure and had been dreaming of it
for years.
Finally, after days of travelling on boats and planes, I was in the Gobi Desert. The pilot wished
me luck, waved me goodbye and dropped me off in the middle of nowhere.
I set off during the day. It was terribly hot and I went through three tubes of sun cream. But
I knew that it would be cold at night so I had also packed warm clothes as well as very light
clothes. Dragging my extremely heavy backpack through the amazingly hot Gobi Desert was
very, very hard work.
It was beginning to get dark and I knew I had to set up camp. So I found a nice little curved
rock to set my tent under. My tent was supposed to be waterproof and “very closed up, to keep out
the sorts of animals people don’t like” that is what the shop assistant said. Like snakes and scorpions.
I settled down to sleep in my tent. I followed the instructions and I was pretty sure that I got
it right. But then I thought WHAT AM I DOING? I am a girl in the middle of the desert and I have
no guide and no HAIR STRAIGHTENERS!
I tried to calm myself down. I took ten deep breaths, in through my nose out through my
mouth, in through my nose out through my mouth. After a few minutes of breathing deeply I
calmed down and told myself “I am a brave girl” about a forty or fifty times.
In the morning I decided to stick to my plan, to head to the other side of the desert. I was still
worried, I had only just realised what I was doing, where I was and I wondered, why am I doing
this? But I kept on going, dragging a five hundred ton backpack on my back with a one thousand
belongings in it.
I walked and walked and walked. I walked for what seemed like a billion miles. Finally, it
began to get dark. I set up my tent again, got into my sleeping bag and went to sleep. I woke up in
the middle of the night.
Something was wriggling around in my sleeping bag. It was long and slender and it felt like...
a snake! I panicked, I had done a study of desert animals before I left home and the snakes here
have some of the most lethal venom in the world!
I got out of my sleeping bag and grabbed the snake by the tail and flicked it outside, I looked
at it and realised it was not venomous. I took it outside and went back to sleep. So much for “very
closed up” I thought. But as I went to sleep I thought what other challenges would I experience in
the desert and who else might be involved?
I huddled down for another night. The next day I saw a man riding on a camel, he looked as if
he was Mongolian. His name was Batbayar. I had to ask him 10 times how to pronounce it.
Batbayar was extremely kind, He lent me one of his camels to ride instead of walking on foot.
