Lop Nor, to the north of charkhlik, is a shallow salt lake fed by the Tarim River and surrounded by salt marshes and a salt-encrusted plain. China conducted most of its nuclear tests in this area. Just west of Lop Nor once stood the important caravan trading city of Loulan.

Marco Polo took 30 days to cross the "desert of Lop" to reach Dunhuang. This was the worst stretch of the southern caravan route. Apart from the lack of water, strange voices misled travelers, causing them to wander off.

Sven Hedin's greatest discovery came in the Lop Nor region in 1900. His expedition was financed by the King of Sweden and the millionaire Emmanuel Nobel; originally it was to survey and map the Shache River and its continuation, the Tarim River. He planned to follow the Tarim to Lop Nor Lake where the river emptied, and which had a mysterious habit of shifting over the course of years. Hedin's familiarity with the region enabled him to conclude that this "wandering" was due to the many glacier-fed rivers that often changed course and hence the shape of the shallow lake.

After three months of traveling along the Shache River, it froze over. Hedin's expedition marched on foot across the desert to Cherchen, then towards Marco polo's "Desert of Lop" in the eastern part of the Taklamaken. Digging in this area produced ancient paper with Chinese writing on it and documents written on wood with Buddhist designs. This turned out to be the ancient garrison town of Loulan, built to guard China's western frontier and the Silk Road traffic that passed through it; even when Marco Polo passed by in 1224, it had been buried in the sands for over a thousand years.

Stein came to Loulan in 1914, guided by Hedin's first map of the area, and found many coins and documents. In recent decades, Chinese archeological teams have worked at the site and unearthed lengths of tamped walls and timbers of an ancient roadway. Coins, jewellery, inscribed wooden figures and pottery sherds have also been recovered.