Chasing vestiges of the Great Wall (3)

When I turned around, out of nowhere, about a dozen horses were making their way toward the wall. Led by a handsome gray, the majestic animals approached. They strutted across the darker grass of the trench to the crown of the mound, pausing to look, nod their heads and swish their tails.

I stood transfixed. I couldn't have expected a finer welcome at the Eastern Steppe's Wall of Genghis Khan.

My companions and I camped nearby, just a few hundred meters inside the line of the wall, beside a walled square. These, we found, had been established along the structure's entire length, and might have acted as barracks and post stations for messengers.

"Huge herd of gazelles on the right — 3 o'clock!" the radio crackled.

Using binoculars, I followed the directions. I panned forward but could not reach the front of the herd before losing the animals over the skyline. Panning back through 3 km of steppe, I saw several thousand of them galloping.

We drove on and soon crossed paths with the gazelles. Across the wall, the trench and the road, they sped right in front of us. At that moment, the animals showed us how useless a trench-mound structure would have been to stop them in their path.

At the same time, I could imagine the drama, and later the carnage wrought by Ogodei's palisade, his archers standing behind it with their bows drawn.

I'd invited biologist Kirk Olson to join the expedition because he lived in a yurt on the steppe for five years while researching gazelles.

Olson asked me about gazelle sightings I'd made in China. He also asked me how far was it possible to drive across the Inner Mongolian steppe before encountering something — a vehicle, a building and a fence.

Under threat

I'd seen one or two gazelles on a couple of occasions. In Inner Mongolia it was difficult to come across total emptiness. There was always something to see or something going on: gravel and sand digging, trucks driving by, buildings, power lines, new towns in the middle of nowhere.

We recommend:
Zhang Yuqi, Wang Quanan get married	Super kittens that make you laugh	Never-seen photos of Madonna on display
"Low-carbon fashion" show held in China	Hold on to the last tattoo of Li people	11 most creative elevators in the world
World's most precious diamonds	Cute baby and his little bulldogs	Angelababy poses for VOGUE magazine