Setting off from Heavenly Lake across the Taklimakan desert on Thursday

It is fortybuggerit degrees and we are broken down in the desert. It is too hot for Asima to go on. So we are waiting here in the blazing sun and furnace wind for it to get cool enough to drive.

Since Madagascar, I have view travel delays with equanimity because what ever it is, it is not as bad as spending more than 12 hours in a truck full of fish. But this is right up there.

And there is nothing we can do but wait until it is cooler. And, given that it is half after two local time, that is going to be a while. There is a silence on the truck that can only be made by thirteen very hot people being very still. As if by not moving we can avoid the attention of the heat.