Travel: Taklamakan Desert, China

As the sun began its long descent late one afternoon in the Taklamakan Desert in the Xinjiang region of northeastern China, my travelling companions and I mounted a train of camels and wondered aloud if we would ever emerge from the dunes that stretched to the horizon. The last sign we had seen before leaving the lonely strip of asphalt was not encouraging: "Entering the desert," the faded Chinese characters said, "please be careful."

My transportation, a gassy Bactrian named Circle, was undaunted by the forbidding landscape. Her owner, a portly grandfather named Ruzmamat who has wandered the desert since he was a boy, chatted on his mobile phone, equally unfazed, as he led us deeper into the dunes.

A thousand years ago, the caravans that criss-crossed Xinjiang, a land of deserts and mountains at the heart of the Silk Road, steered clear of the Taklamakan. Besides the unforgiving terrain, voyagers feared what were said to be desert spirits, who it was believed lured hapless travellers to their demise in the shifting sands. So the Silk Road, linking Constantinople, Baghdad and present-day Xian, split into a southern tier and northern tier at the desert, connecting a constellation of oasis towns such as Kashgar and Khotan where traders transporting spices, ivory and slaves stopped to rest and restock.

Now civilization has finally arrived at the desert's rim. Xinjiang, long forgotten by the Chinese empire, is firmly in the clutches of Beijing, which took control of the region in 1949. Its trade routes once again teem with caravans, this time carrying crude oil, jade, soldiers and, increasingly, tourists.

Travellers who retrace the Silk Road in Xinjiang find that despite the flood of economic development underway, much of this remote province remains a world apart from China and its frantic experiment with Westernisation. In the towns and villages along this ancient trade route few people speak Mandarin, and the traditions of their ancestors - whose kingdoms have been swallowed by the sands - live on in faith and food.

After two years living amid the neon smog of the Chinese capital, the exotic pull of this distant realm had grown too strong to resist. I knew almost nothing about Xinjiang and its main ethnic group, a Turkic race of Sunni Muslims known as Uighurs. Nor do many Chinese, whose ignorance about the people of Xinjiang - a Mandarin word meaning "new frontier" - has fostered suspicion. This mistrust has only deepened since July 2009, when ethnic riots tore through the provincial capital, Urumqi, leaving nearly 200 people dead, most of them Han Chinese migrants killed by their Uighur neighbours.

But increased public security and a raft of new policies that aim to address Uighur grievances have led to the return of tourists, who these days can be found haggling in the bazaars or climbing Muztagh Ata, a 24,757ft peak near the Pakistani border.

To begin my quest I booked a guide online and then flew from Beijing to Urumqi before boarding a plane southwest to Kashgar, the once fabled oasis town that is now a chaotic metropolis choked with taxis and cranes as well as Chinese investors. I arrived there in the middle of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan and headed straight for the Id Kah Mosque - China's largest - which is at the centre of Uighur life in Kashgar. Groups of fasting men fingered prayer beads as they reclined against the building's yellow walls, while women, some veiled, others in sundresses, watched their children run and laugh in the mosque square.

It was then that I smelled what I thought were bagels and made a beeline for the market across the street. I wandered past stalls selling saffron, fur hats and silver bracelets to find clay ovens filled with wheels of golden dough, which were mouth-watering mutton-filled puff-pastries called samsas.

The next morning we were joined by Abdul, a young Uighur man who spoke fluent English and would be our guide for the journey along the southern branch of the Silk Road. As we headed south through a landscape marked by poplars, sunflowers and propaganda signs - "strictly do things the legal way" - farmers appeared, selling succulent honeydews.

We drove under a blazing sun toward Khotan, renowned for its pomegranates and home to one of Central Asia's biggest livestock markets, where each Thursday farmers and shepherds come from across the region, flocks in tow.

It's one thing to buy a camel. It's another thing getting it home. After an hour of haggling on the price of a shaggy female, a price was struck: 5,900 renminbi (about 555).

As for the camel, whether she detested travelling by truck or knew that she would become a meal for a village celebrating the sacrifice festival, Eid al-Adha, she would not move. The more her owner tried to pull her onto the back of his truck, the more the beast refused to budge. When the rope snapped, sending the man crashing to the ground, his wife rolled her eyes. "This was his idea," she said. "He's going to have to deal with it."

Not far from the market, a crowd of men and boys hovered outside a small mosque as dusk crept over the city centre. One man carrying a tray of dates moved through the throng like a waiter at cocktail hour; another handed out slices of cold watermelon. Abdul told us that Islam dictates that only something untouched by fire can break a fast.

Suddenly the street grew quiet as everyone prayed with their palms covering their eyes. Then they ate. Watermelon, it seemed, never tasted so good.

We bounced on camels into the Taklamakan Desert the next afternoon under an overcast sky, with only fruit, bread, water and our camping gear for the overnight trek. Circle, my camel, grazed on spurts of bushy cactus that Ruzmamat, my camel's owner, said erupt from the dunes at the first drop of rain. Although the place is called the Sea of Death, there was a surprising amount of green, but there were no birds and no other people, just a solitude, which felt, well, biblical.

An hour later we parked our camels at the foot of a sand dune and hurried to pitch our tents. Soon the flames were crackling, and Ruzmamat after much pleading, was telling a ghost story: There had been a sandstorm, and his group of German tourists were just emerging from their tents when they heard a howling - and it wasn't the wind. The eerie screams sounded like an injured cat or a goat. "The only problem," he said with well-timed drama, "is that nothing lives in the Taklamakan."

Ruzmamat tried to reassure the Germans, but someone murmured the words everyone was thinking: sand demon. It was then that Ruzmamat counted the panicked tourists - and found that one was missing. When he found the source of the cries, he found the tourist, clinging to a bush, covered in sand. "Let this be a lesson to you all," he told us. "Stay close to your tent."

At dawn, I was the first to wake. I scrambled up a mighty dune and surveyed the landscape. There was nothing but sand and sky.

Soon the others were up, and Ruzmamat was chasing our camels, which had wandered off during the night. It was time to descend, but the walk back to our campsite seemed anticlimactic. Closing my eyes I took a leap, tumbling down the dune with a whoop - a real, live sand demon.

THE FACTS For more information visit www.chinatravelguide.com, www.taklamakan-desert.com

The New York Times 2010

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• This article was first published in The Scotsman on November 6, 2010