Gobi Desert is a great desert and semidesert region of Central Asia . The Gobi (from the Mongolian Gobi , meaning “ waterless place ”) stretches across huge portions of both Mongolia and China . Hence, statement 1 is correct . Much of the Gobi desert is not sandy desert but bare rock . The Gobi desert is bounded by the Altai Mountains and the grasslands and steppes of Mongolia on the north, and Tibetan Plateau to the southwest, and by the North China Plain to the southeast .