The Taklimakan Desert Loop

The Hotan–Ruoqiang railway — 和若铁路, Hé–Ruò Tiělù — opened on 16 June 2022, 825 kilometres along the southern rim of the Taklimakan, the world's second-largest shifting-sand desert. It closed a loop of 2,712 kilometres round the desert with three older lines — Korla to Kashgar on the north side, Kashgar to Hotan in the west and Ruoqiang to Korla in the east — and China Railway calls it the first railway loop round a desert anywhere. Five of the oasis towns it serves, Luopu, Cele, Yutian, Minfeng and Qiemo, had never had a railway before.

534 kilometres of the line, almost two-thirds of it, run through wind-blown sand, where low dunes can move twenty metres in a year. Where they move most, the railway does not try to hold them back: it goes up on bridges and lets the sand blow underneath.

This page rides the desert line from Ruoqiang to Hotan on the 5817, which makes the whole crossing in daylight, and the K9787, which takes three sides of the loop from Ürümqi to Kashgar in 29 hours.

Ruoqiang to Qiemo

The 5817 has come down overnight from Ürümqi by way of Korla, and leaves Ruoqiang at 09:35, turning west off the line to Golmud onto the desert line proper. This is the corridor the old Southern Silk Road took: the Altyn-Tagh and the Kunlun to the south, the Tarim Basin and its desert to the north, and a string of oases between them where the rivers come down from the mountains. Washixia is a town station; then Qiemo, the seat of the second-largest county in China, is reached at a little after midday.

Over the sand

Beyond Qiemo the train calls at Jinshan and Nantun, which serve regiments of the Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps, and then comes to Minfeng. In Minfeng County are the line's two great bridges: the Niya River bridge, 18.6 kilometres long on 560 piers, the longest on the line, and the Ruokeya bridge, 9.7 kilometres long, with piers up to 35 metres high — the highest. Altogether 434 of the line's bridge piers were cast in a factory and assembled on site, the first time the method had been used on railway bridges, so that no water had to be carried into the desert to mix concrete.

Where the line runs on the ground it is protected by a green belt planted as it was being built: 50 million square metres of straw grids, squares of straw pushed into the sand to hold it, and 13 million shrubs and trees — saxaul, red willow and sea buckthorn — with the taller trees on the outside to break the wind.

The oases to Hotan

West of Minfeng the train calls at Yutian on the Keriya, the Corps' station at Yuquanzhen, Cele and Luopu. The line crosses the Yurungkash, the White Jade River, and the 5817 arrives in Hotan at 18:55, nine hours and twenty minutes after Ruoqiang.

The train

The line is single-track and not electrified, built for 120 km/h. Its trains are hauled by DF11 diesels, sometimes two at a time, and made up of China Railway's green long-distance coaches. The 5817 and 5818 carry hard seats, hard sleepers and soft sleepers; the K9787 and K9788, hard seats and hard sleepers.

Two trains a day run each way over the desert line, both daily, and both start or end far beyond it. The 5817 and 5818 run between Hotan and Ürümqi; the K9787 and K9788 between Kashgar and Ürümqi South, by way of Hotan, Ruoqiang and Korla. Like many Chinese trains they change number on the way: the 5817 leaves Ürümqi as the 5816, the K9787 leaves Ürümqi South as the K9786, and the K9788 leaves Kashgar as the K9785.

The 5817 is the train to take for the desert. It leaves Ruoqiang at 09:35 and reaches Hotan at 18:55, in daylight at every time of year.

Ruoqiang to Hotan

Hotan to Ruoqiang

Every train also calls at the line's other six stations: Washixia, Jinshan, Nantun, Yuquanzhen, Cele and Luopu. Between Kashgar and Hotan there are six trains a day, the first leaving Kashgar at 04:45 and the last at 17:15.

Times are from 12306 for Thursday 15 and Sunday 18 October 2026, and were the same on both days — as of October 2026. Times are published by the operator: China Railway · 12306 (opens in a new tab).

Every ticket is sold on 12306 against your passport, which is then your ticket at the gates. Between Ruoqiang and Hotan the 5817 and 5818 charge ¥98 for a hard seat, ¥180 for a hard sleeper and ¥287 for a soft sleeper; the K trains charge ¥112 and ¥194. The whole of the K9787, Ürümqi South to Kashgar, is ¥240 in a hard seat and ¥408 in a hard sleeper.

Keep your passport on you. The UK Foreign Office advises that Xinjiang has passport and security checks at shopping centres, markets and parks, that visitors may be asked for a phone number and photographed, and not to photograph security officials or installations.

No rail pass covers this line. Interrail and Eurail are European passes and do not reach China, and China Railway sells its seats one journey at a time on 12306, so the fare is simply the ticket.

Checked in October 2026.

Hotan, at the western end of the desert line, was the Buddhist Kingdom of Khotan on the Southern Silk Road, and two of its ruins stand within reach of the city. The K9787 runs on from Hotan to Kashgar.

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