Xinjiang

Ejected roughly from a loosely air-conditioned cab, we spill out into Kashgar’s archaic sandstone market centre, a dilapidated mix of ancient brick work and modern concrete glued together by the native Uighur population. Once a major gateway on the silk route from the farthest reaches of western China through to snowy Pakistan and beyond, Kashgar now resembles a dusty set from 1970s Hong Kong cinema, torn at the seams by ethnic disputes.

Fumbling for a camera, I steady my rudely awakened body against a less-than-adequate lamp post and begin to take in the sepia-infused locale.

Tightly-packed, low-rise buildings form dusty runways that coral scurrying people from salon to Tabac, life partially hidden from view by a blanket of thick, bubbling wood-smoke pouring from every architectural orifice. The viscous smoke stacks rise upwards, rallying together, aggressively suffocating the black crenellated shadow of a biblical horizon. Momentarily poetic.

Our cab splutters and pulls away leaving us stranded outside the peeling green doors of an old youth hostel. Inside, dimly lit dormitories encircle a mosaiced open courtyard currently home to a pack of motorcyclists from Beijing quietly fixing their metal steeds.

Above the courtyard, a European cyclist perches on a balcony watching the entourage below, occasionally stabbing at his notepad with thoughts, pausing only to look wistfully at the bubbling horizon. We check in and pass a time-worn computer moaning wearily as an earnest traveller attempts, unsuccessfully, to check the weather forecast, and somewhere behind closed doors a hardy fridge hums, happily laden full of locally produced honey beer.