Badain Jaran, China’s Desert of Giant Dunes and Lakes, Joins the World Heritage List

UNESCO inscribed the Badain Jaran Desert on the World Heritage list on 26 July 2024, at the session held in New Delhi. The official title is Badain Jaran Desert, Towers of Sand and Lakes. It was listed as a natural site, for its scenery and for what it shows of how deserts form.

Mountains of sand

The desert lies on the Alxa plateau in the west of Inner Mongolia, at about 1,200 metres above sea level. It covers some 49,000 square kilometres and is the third largest desert in China. The part that was listed is its south-eastern corner, where the dunes are highest.

These are megadunes. They do not move across the ground as ordinary dunes do, though their surface sand shifts with the wind. Many are 200 to 300 metres high. The highest, Bilutu, rises about 500 metres from its foot to a summit 1,611 metres above the sea, and is the tallest stationary dune in the world. On steep slopes in summer, when the sand is dry, a slide of sand sets off a low humming sound that can be heard at a distance.

Lakes without rivers

More than a hundred lakes lie in the hollows between the dunes. The district receives only 50 to 60 millimetres of rain a year and no river enters it. The lakes are fed from below, by groundwater that is thought to come from distant mountains through the gravels under the sand. Some are fresh and edged with reeds. Others are salt, and coloured pink or green by algae and brine shrimp. Springs rise in the middle of several of them.

Beside one of the lakes stands a small Tibetan Buddhist temple, built in 1868. Its remoteness protected it, and it is still in use. A few Mongol herding families live among the dunes with camels and goats.

For travellers

The desert is entered from the south, through the county town of Alxa Right Banner, which is reached by road from Zhangye or Jinchang on the Hexi corridor railway in Gansu. No ordinary vehicle can go further. Visitors transfer to four-wheel-drive cars with local drivers, who cross the dunes to the temple lake and to Bilutu. A trip takes two or three days, with nights in simple guesthouses kept by the herders. September and October are the best months, when the days are clear and mild. Summer is very hot and spring brings sandstorms.

A journey here combines with the painted cliffs of Zhangye and the Buddhist caves of the Silk Road. For other recent listings, including the Xixia imperial tombs at the far side of the same plateau, see our guide to China’s new World Heritage sites.