"Ten Years of Kneeling in the Gobi"

A Decade in the Desert – Diary of an Agate Hunter

“Out of three thousand stones, take only one.” This proverb captures the obsession and purity of agate hunting. In Inner Mongolia’s Alxa Desert, herders once saw agates as children’s toys—until a “meat-shaped stone” sold for millions, turning the desert into a treasure hunt.

True agate seekers chase deeper meaning. Tashi, a Tibetan wanderer, describes his ritual: crawling across dunes, feeling stones with bare hands instead of metal detectors. “The agate’s veins are diaries written by desert winds,” he says. “Every crack holds a thousand-year story.”

These stones endure eons: volcanic fires birth their colors, glaciers carve their forms, and sandstorms polish their surfaces into “desert glaze.” Now, over-mining has nearly depleted Alxa’s agates, leaving Mongolia’s southern Gobi as the last sanctuary.

Why Collect Them?
Agates aren’t just rare—they’re conversations with Earth. As collectors say, “We don’t own stones; we safeguard fragments of time.”