New Tales of the Gobi Desert
French International School, Kabir Sodhi, Fiction: Group 3
I
t was dark out. It was cold too. Freezing in fact. That’s one of the things that irritates me
about the Gobi, its flaming hot during the day and ice cold at night and the only time there is
any pleasant weather during the day is around eight o’clock, when the temperature is going
from hot to cold, and that only lasts for about half an hour. The only upside is the stars.
I’m from Hong Kong and in Hong Kong there are rarely any stars in the sky so I was absolutely
astounded when I looked up at the sky on my first night and it was littered with what seemed like
the whole galaxy.
Anyways, enough about the stars. I was actually in the Gobi for a reason believe it or not.
I was trying to get a PHD in Chinese history/geography at the time and I thought it would be a
great idea if I were to travel the Gobi and become the first person to document the finding of one
of the lost cities of northern China or Mongolia. Surely I would get my PHD after that.
Back to the story. So I was trudging through the silky sand when I spotted something in the
distance. I ran to take a closer look (it was only about a hundred metres away but running in the
sand is extremely tiring). When I got close enough to make out what the thing was, it made a tiny
jump, landed on the soft sand and sank straight into some kind of burrow or hole which closed up
as soon as the creature jumped in. At first I thought the creature was a Gobi bear, one of the least
documented animals in the world. Many people doubt that the Gobi bear even exists and if I were
to find one and document it I would become famous.
I took the shovel out of my rucksack and began digging at the exact spot where the bear
disappeared. I kept digging but the walls of the hole I had made kept caving in, making my work
even more tiresome. However, I was determined. I was going to find that bear.
After about two hours of digging in the dead of the night with only a headlamp for light, my
shovel hit something hard. I ran my hands over the object to see if there was any handle with
which I might be able to grip the object. I had to put my hand about a foot deep into the sand but I
found the handle. I yanked at the handle to try and pull the object out of the sand completely. Bad
idea. I almost ripped my shoulder out of its socket. My arm was in intense pain and I collapsed on
to the soft walls of my sand hole. When I woke up in the morning the first thing I noticed was I
couldn’t move my arm, it was just hanging limp on the side of my torso and that there was a baby
bear sitting on top of a humungous trunk right in front of me. As soon as the bear realised that I
was awake, it jumped from its perch on the trunk and landed in the sand between my outstretched
legs. I closed my eyes and prepared for the worst which was frankly, quite silly as the bear was an
adorable little thing which looked like a living teddy-bear with long limbs. As I closed my eyes I
blacked out again because the pain in my arm just wasn’t dulling.
I jerked awake in what felt like seconds to find the bear sitting at the bottom of an open trunk.
I yelled in joy (and pain because all movement hurt). I sort of half staggered, half pulled myself
to my feet and fell into the trunk. The trunk was not a trunk but more like a room with multiple
doors on the sides. It was quite cold inside and the only warmth I could get was from a ray of
sunlight coming from the Gobi desert above. It also smelled rotten. The bear jumped in after me,
landed on my chest, rolled off my chest and then bounded towards one of the doors. I stumbled
after the bear (which by the way, I had decided to call Limbs because of his freakishly long arms
