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Walking to the outskirts of the town, I scrambled up parts of its former earthen defensive walls. The urban area appeared compact with mostly low-rise, flat roofed dwellings. It was remarkable how near the desert encroached, how quickly green turned to colours of aridity. Noticeable were the great sand hills of Mingshashan, a range 40 kilometres long. Local roads, lined by tall poplar trees, led between intensively cultivated fields. Water gushed along irrigation channels so allowing production of vegetables, fruit and cotton. Following a country road I passed through a compact village where farmers tended goats or toiled in the fields alongside some crops grown under plastic sheeting.

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