The Badain Jaran Desert occupies parts of China and Inner Mongolia covering an area of 49,000 sq.
kilometers making it the third largest desert in China.
Some of these dunes have been measured to reach heights of more than 500 meters.
Badain Jaran has an extremely arid climate with an annual precipitation between 50-60mm.
Nearly 40-80 times of the precipitation gets evaporated away before it falls as rainfall.
Its these lakes that give the desert its name which in Mongolian means “mysterious lakes”.
The source of this water is precipitation and snowmelt in the mountains surrounding the desert hundreds of kilometers away.
Evaporation have also led some hypersaline lakes to form salt crust around the rim of the lakes.
Most lakes also support a green ring of vegetation that populate the close vicinity around the lakes.
