1996, Philip Andrews-Speed, “Herdsmen of Chinese Turkestan”, in Asian Affairs[1], volume 27, number 1, →DOI, →ISSN, →OCLC:
In order to find clues as to how they lived it might be reasonable to visit the most primitive and isolated oasis community in the Tarim Basin. Arguably this is the village of Tongguzbasti which lies in the delta of the Keriya River, in the middle of the Taklamakan desert[...]
'Oh, yes. A man was brought to us about a year ago. There'd been a big storm along the southern sector of the Taklamakan. It went on for four or five days. This man was a goatherd from Tongguzbasti. He'd gone out into the desert in search of tamarisk, along with a camel for the load. At midday he had some bread and water and lay down for a sleep. When he woke there was a storm the like of which he'd never seen before. There was nothing for it but to hunker down and make the best of it; but at some point - whether it was day or night he couldn't say - he found himself on his feet, shouting and screaming at the noise, and walking for what must have been miles.'
A week into the trip Korbel told me I was riding well, no trouble at all for him, so we would detour a little to the east, toward an oasis called Tongguzbasti. We would soon pick up a very old route, he told me, one that ran between the Khotan, which we had by then gained, and another riverbed, the Keriya. Along the way we would see something.
