"'Look, sand dunes.' West of Zhangboa, we saw a Saharan landscape of fresh ripples on sheet sand and shifting dunes. The older sand, covered by short grass in places, was nature's way of stabilising their movement. My personal favourite was the family of barchan. These crescent-shaped dunes imperceptibly move forward along their concave curve.

'Looks like a graphic artists is slowly elongating the two tails of the crescent. Can you hear the hiss?' I heard the silence broken by the hiss of fine sand moving in the air. It was like the faintest hiss that can be heard when dousing a fire with water. But it was continuous and disturbingly soft, the kind you need to strain your ears to hear. 'You're imagining the sound,' I was told."

--from Here Be Yaks by Manosi Lahiri

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