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October 24, 2008
Lop Nur gives people the impression of completely desolate. It is famous for its Yadan Landscape, Lolan Civilization disappearing among the sand dunes, probable source of the Yellow River, obstacle in the Silk Road, mysterious missing or death of archaeologists and explorers, and the satellite pictures of the 'Big Ear.' All of these simply make Lop Nur ever more dangerous yet mesmerizing.
October 13-18, 2008, Lop Nur Auto Race 2008 was held by the Federation of Automobile Sports of PRC, and many professional auto race teams from Hong Kong and various places of China gathered together here to challenge the mysterious desolate desert. Among all the participants were more than 40 race cars and over 80 car racers. They all came with their own tuned cars and excitedly set off towards the mysterious Lop Nur.
According to the committee of the Race, the difficulty and the rules of this race is either equal of higher than those of any world class cross-country race games. Considering the unique geographic conditions and the difficulty of the routes, the committee made it a requirement for the participating teams to equip their cars with equipment that meet international safety standards. Besides, professional GPS units and satellite phones were also required. Helicopters were also asked to patrol over the the grounds in case of any emergency. The maintain car for this race was installed with the GPS navigation system made by a local company, Fly Audio.
There were four sections in the route. The first one, SS1, began in Dikan, Piqan County, and ended in Qiketai, going 426.12km. The challenging part covered 146.23km of it, where racers had to drive through Gobi, desert, dried river beds, and sand dunes in three hours.
After SS1, the next stop would be Hami, 300km away from it. From Qiketai to the next station in Hami was 279.86 km long.
SS2 started from South Lake, Hami, to the Natural Gas Pipe Project section 579, 100km from the hinterland of Lop Nur. The challenging part covered 92.15km of it. It was estimated to take up 1hour and 20 minutes, but 3 hours were allowed at the most. The starting point was a spot at Gobi, 2km away from Haluo Highway. Everything in sight was either desert or the blue sky, complimenting each other. The scene was spectacular.
SS3 picked up from where SS2 ended, the Natural Gas Pipe Project section 579, and the challenging part was 206.25km long. It ended at Hami Highway section 235, located 100km deep into the Highway, which was completely in the hinterland of Lop Nur.
SS4 began from Haluo Highway section 120 to section 55, covering 122.20km. It went through shallow sand dunes, rocky mountains, Gobi, sharp pits, consecutive sand dunes, soft sand. In addition, the racers had to drive through Yadan, an area notoriously known as the devil's city.
After many days of hard trials and rough trips through Lop Nur, all racers had all been presented with great challenges.
After all these challenges, only 31 cars out of the 42 that started off the race could still run functionally. The danger of Lop Nur was evident.
We could see from the racer's manual that the last section of the route began with a path of shallow sand dunes of 20km, followed by long arrays of sand dunes, and then entered an area of soft sand of over 10 kilometers. What's next was not a paradise, but a series of rock fields, sand dunes, dried river beds, rocky mountains, and then Gobi, sharp pits, and sand dunes of multi-story tall, including Yadan area. The difficulty was beyond imagination.
On October 18, 2008, after the challenges of the four sections, the Lop Nur Auto Race 2008 was ended. The highly anticipated Bin Liu, number 2 racer of Monarch Oil and Mitsubishi Motors and Taiguang Du, with their total scores being the highest, claimed the Grand Champion of the Lop Nur Auto Race 2008.
What's worth mentioning, the maintain car of this race was installed with the GPS unit made by a local company FlyAudio. Even when we were in the desolate Lop Nur desert where no clear road systems or signs were visible, the GPS unit still faithfully recorded the history of our routes and brought us back to where we came from safely.
The FlyAudio GPS was just designed for popular users, but it still survived such harsh conditions as Lop Nur and delivered excellent performance. We were driving over 100 kilometers in the hinterland of Lop Nur and experienced many complicated road conditions and difficult weathers, still not even once had the GPS suffered from any trouble. It kept all of us from getting lost in the desert, which was truly remarkable.
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