Helen Thayer - Walking the Gobi: A 1600-Mile Trek Across a Desert of Hope and Despair

Fortunately, the daring Thayer, age 63, fights nature and common sense for us, giving readers a fascinating account of her 1,600 mile journey with her husband, Bill, 74Despite the hardship, Thayer is a sure and steady guide; this harrowing travelogue reads like a nail-biting adventure, sure to enthrall fans of Jon Krakauer and Bill Bryson.

Publishers Weekly

Helen Thayer is a survivor: not just of daily slings and arrows, but of polar bear attacks and Arctic storms, close calls with piranhas and crocodiles, the stings of hundreds of wasps and even an ambush by armed illegal gold miners.

Shape magazine

Helen Thayer is a remarkable woman whose accomplishments make her sound like a character dreamed up by the fertile imagination of a fiction writer.

Autograph Times

Thayer is an explorer-naturalist of a breed that in a modern age is more threatened than wolves. She is not a millionaire, an academic, a government scientist, or the sponsored face of a large corporation. In the beginning, she wasnt even a writer. Instead, shes a self-taught, self-financed, and self-effacing woman whose chief interest in life has been to do difficult and interesting things. Her adventures are a mixture of climb-it-because-its-there feats of endurance and quasi-scientific efforts to satisfy her own curiosity.

The Washington Post

Its the stories of smugglers in the night, a camel temper tantrum that cost a weeks worth of water, and sightings of a wild desert bear that make this book irresistible.

Rocky Mountain News

A tightly written and quick-moving account of [a] perilous journey.

The Herald,Everett, WA

Helen Thayer shows not only her sense of courage and adventure, but also her talent as a writer and, through her words, her love of the desert and the culture therein Thayer deserves applause not only for her incredible life as an adventurer, but also for her mastery of language that brings us on the journey with her Thayers writing pace turns this eighty-one day excursion into a journey readers can experience in just a few hourspreferably in the comfort of shelter, food and water.

Indigo Editing

Walking the Gobi provides easy access into a world most Westerners know only by its exotic history.

The Seattle Times

A 1600-MILE TREK ACROSS A DESERT OF HOPE AND DESPAIR

HELEN THAYER

THE MOUNTAINEERS BOOKS is the nonprofit publishing arm of The Mountaineers Club, an organization founded in 1906 and dedicated to the exploration, preservation, and enjoyment of outdoor and wilderness area.

1001 SW Klickitat Way, Suite 201, Seattle, WA 98134

2007 by Helen Thayer

All rights reserved

First edition: first printing 2007, second printing 2008, third printing 2010

No part of this book may be reproduced in any form, or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, without permission in writing from the publisher.

Manufactured in the United States of America

Copy Editor: Sherri Schultz
Cover, Book Design, and Layout: Mayumi Thompson
Cartographer: Moore Creative Designs

All photographs by the author unless otherwise noted.
Cover photograph: Bactrian camel on dunes. George Steinmetz/
Corbis

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Thayer, Helen.
Walking the Gobi: a 1600-mile trek across a desert of hope and
despair / Helen Thayer.1st ed.
p. cm.
ISBN 978-1-59485-064-X(hardcover)
ISBN 978-1-59485-112-4(paperback)
1. Gobi Desert (Mongolia and China)Description and travel.
2. MongoliaDescription and travel. 3. HikingGobi Desert
(Mongolia and China) 4. HikingMongolia. 5. Thayer,
HelenTravelGobi Desert (Mongolia and China) I. Title.
DS798.9.G63T54 2007
915.173dc22

2007023416

Printed on recycled paper

To Bill, for his unfailing support,
and to the nomads of the Mongolian Gobi Desert

I first learned of Mongolia at age thirteen during a lecture by our teacher, Miss Carpenter, at Pukekohe High School in New Zealand, the country where I was born. As I listened to her describe Mongolia and its mysterious Gobi Desert, I knew this was a place I had to explore. Even after learning that the Communist government had closed the borders to foreigners, I kept the dream alive.

I acquired a taste for adventure at an early age. I often imagined myself climbing mountains, or in some far-off place exploring where few others had been. Long before society accepted the idea of women challenging themselves with long treks across polar ice caps and deserts, I yearned to test myself, to push myself to the limit, and to associate with little-known cultures. With the money I earned helping my father with farm chores, I began to accumulate an impressive collection of travel books.

I started climbing mountains at nine, when I summited New Zealands 8,258-foot Mount Taranaki in midwinter with my parents, whose unfailing encouragement urged me to set my goals to infinity. Eventually such explorations would become my life. In 1988 I founded Adventure Classroom, an educational program for students from kindergarten to grade twelve that allows me to share the splendor of my expeditions with youngsters who might learn from my experiences. Since then, sometimes alone and sometimes with my husband Bill, a retired helicopter pilot, Ive trekked from the Arctic to Antarctica and from the Amazon rain forest to some of the worlds greatest deserts in a quest for knowledge of distant lands.

But always there, at the edge of my expedition plans, was that unfulfilled childhood dream, the Mongolian Gobi Desert.

Mongolia, an ancient land, is a country of enchanting, hospitable people, windswept open spaces, and unexpected extremes. Its approximately three million people live in one of the least-populated and highest-altitude countries in the world, sandwiched between two political giants, Russia and China. More than half of all Mongolians still live in traditional felt tents, called gers, and many follow a nomadic lifestyle that has remained unchanged for more than a thousand years.

Most visitors shun Mongolias Gobi Desert as a scorched wasteland, devoid of anything worthwhile. It is a world of blinding sandstorms, oven-like heat, and desolation so entrenched that in most places even the hardiest trees refuse to growa treacherous void that swallows the careless traveler.

But a closer look reveals a Gobi that has been home to nomad families for hundreds of years. They hold on to life with hands gnarled by hard work. Their round gers shelter families who share laughter and dreams of spring rains that grow needed grass to fatten their animals. In winter they endure severe winter storms, or zuds, that bring heavy winter snow and temperatures that may plunge to 40 below zero, killing their camels, sheep, and goats. In summer, temperatures soar well above 100 degrees. Clearly, these are a resilient and hardy people.