The Ordos Desert is almost completely encircled in the west, north and east by a great rectangular bend of the middle Yellow River known as the Ordos Loop. Mountain ranges separate the Ordos from the Gobi Desert north and east of the Yellow River. The northern border serves as the southern border of the Mu Us Desert. The mountain chains separating the Ordos from the central Gobi in the north of the great bend of the Yellow River are: the Kara-naryn-ula, the Sheitenula, and the Yin Mountains, which link on to the south end of the Greater Khingan Mountains. In the south and east, the Great Wall of China separates the Ordos from fertile loess lands. The Ordos covers the southern section of the Inner Mongolia, an Autonomous Region of China, the Ningxia, an Autonomous Entity of China, and the Chinese Provinces of Shaanxi and Gansu.