THERE we were on holiday in China, starving and trying to order dinner - except that no one in that spot spoke Mandarin.
Instead there was the tourist pantomime of pointing and gesticulating, not quite what you would expect travelling somewhere you speak the language, or think you do.
ON THE SIDE: A shop in Tashkurgan, a tiny town that is populated mainly by the Tajik minority.
But this would be a recurring theme during our trip to Xinjiang. China's vast north-western province is home to about a dozen of its ethnic minorities, most of whom would be unimpressed with our O-level Mandarin.
That dinner was our first in Kashgar, the historic oasis town that was an important stop on the old Silk Road, which linked East and West in a kind of early, horse-and-camel version of globalisation.
Caravans bearing silk, spices and other precious cargo began trundling through these streets more than 2,000 years ago.
Marco Polo stopped here too. For him and other traders, Kashgar was a place where they could refuel before heading into the mountains and desert, or crash after stumbling out.
All we had to do was stumble out of a plane, but even then it took more than six hours to get there from Beijing, longer than the flight from Singapore to the Chinese capital.
It did not take long to realise why China took ages to conquer these lands. Their remoteness and extreme terrain make them pretty unforgiving.
Geopolitically, this has always been a tricky corner of the world. Just a few hundred kilometres from Kashgar are the borders of Pakistan, Tajikistan, Afghanistan and Kyrgyzstan, all mashed together in a mess of mountains, rivers and deserts.
And then there is Kashgar itself. It may have Chinese street signs and a Chinese name (Kashi), but its population is more than two-thirds Uighur rather than Han, who are in the majority nearly everywhere else.
The Uighurs are Muslim and have their own Turkic language, which looks like Arabic in written form. And they make this Chinese city look like no other, with their striking Central Asian features and dress - craggy-faced men in skullcaps and long beards, and heavily eyelinered women in burqas and headscarves.
Kashgar usually draws travellers looking for a bit of Silk Road nostalgia, but many also come to gawk at its legendary Sunday market, an impressive gathering of tens of thousands of livestock traders, some from as far away as Pakistan and Eastern Europe.
It is a short ride out of town, but the taxi we take there might as well be a time machine because the tangle of hooves, horns and hats that we pull up at looks like it has not changed in centuries.
People arrive in donkey carts and trucks that disgorge their mooing, baaing and braying contents into a matrix of pens, where they can be haggled over for hours. (Three hundred dollars will get you a pretty decent donkey, apparently.)
Next to this are stalls selling harnesses, freshly butchered carcasses, pizza- and bagel-shaped Uighur breads and steaming cups of fragrant black tea.
Walk a little further and you can buy strawberries or a frying pan, or get a haircut and a shave.
ORNATE BEAUTY: Check out the interior of the 17th-century tomb of Abakh Khoja outside Kashgar, an architectural gem which is regarded by Sufi Muslims as the holiest place in Xinjiang.
And all this under a cinematic veil of sepia-toned dust - a constant reminder of the always-encroaching desert, which occasionally unleashes sandstorms that can stop planes, trains and buses for days at a stretch.
We head back into town to see the other half of the market, called the Central Asian International Grand Bazaar. The hundreds of shops sell everything from spices, dried fruit and medicines to knives, carpets, clothes and household goods.
We spend far too long looking at hats - embroidered skullcaps, sequinned headdresses and Russian ear-flapped ushankas made of fox and mink - before stepping out for a bite.
Uighurs love their ice cream, so we buy a cone of the soft-serve stuff being sold at every corner. We could not figure out which animal provided the milk for it, but it was freshly made and stunningly creamy.
There are also street stalls selling cups of blood-red pomegranate juice, handpulled noodles known as laghman, shish kebabs and an endless variety of freshly baked Uighur breads.
Also worth exploring are the atmospheric streets around Id Kah Mosque and in Kashgar's old city, a mediaeval labyrinth packed with crumbling houses and more mosques, some no wider than a doorway.
But despite these charms, you will not want to spend more than a few days in the town itself. Kashgar's reason for being, after all, is as a crossroads - a starting point from which to explore the region.
One of the best side trips is the drive up the great Karakoram Highway, an asphalt ribbon that retraces part of the Silk Road through the Himalayan, Karakoram and Pamir mountains, all the way to Pakistan.
This two-lane marvel is the highest paved road in the world and probably one of the most spectacular as well, winding through a landscape that is part alpine and part Martian as it cruises to breath-stealing heights of more than 4,700m.
Myriad of cultures
LIVE ACTION: Kashgar's legendary Sunday market is an impressive gathering of tens of thousands of livestock traders, some from as far away as Pakistan and Eastern Europe.
It takes us to lovely Lake Karakul, which sits pretty at about 3,600m, framed by snow-capped peaks such as the towering Muztagh Ata.
Here, the locals are not Uighurs but Pamir Kirghiz, whose brethren have a remarkable history of their own (the subject of a brilliant documentary called 37 Uses For A Dead Sheep, about a tiny tribe bounced from country to country as regimes rose and fell).
An hour later, we are on the road again, this time to Tashkurgan.
At this point, the altitude sickness kicks in. The short flight of stairs to the town's stone fort proves too much for my oxygen-starved brain, which abruptly orders me to sit down.
Thankfully, it recovers sufficiently for a quick tour of the tiny town, where we see yet another costume change, this time courtesy of the Tajik minority, which has features and colouring that seem more Persian or Caucasian.
Though the odd shopkeeper is Han Chinese, once again, this seems a very long way from Beijing.
Which is not to say that Beijing's presence is not felt. The long arm of the central government is all too apparent at the two checkpoints we pass en route to Tashkurgan.
Uniformed guards scrutinise our passports and check our bags, taking particular interest in a laptop computer and a copy of National Geographic, one of them pausing and muttering 'Lama?' when he sees a photo of Bhutanese monks on one of its pages.
With so many ethnic groups, you can hardly expect Xinjiang to be the most trouble-free province in China. And indeed just before our trip, which we made shortly after the unrest in Tibet, Uighurs in a town near Kashgar staged a protest against Chinese rule.
But then this cultural patchwork probably makes it one of the most interesting provinces as well.
5 things to do
1 Do visit the 17th-century tomb of Abakh Khoja outside Kashgar. It is an architectural gem with gorgeous blue-and-green tiled domes surrounded by graceful courtyards. Sufi Muslims regard it as the holiest place in Xinjiang.
2 Do take at least one side trip to Tashkurgan or Lake Karakul. If you have more time, travel overland to Pakistan or Kyrgyzstan, though you will need to arrange visas for that in Singapore and Beijing respectively.
3 Do stop for a night in Urumqi, where flights to Kashgar must transit. It is a terrific place for sampling Hui, Uzbek, Kazakh and Pakistani cuisines, as well as the superb Uighur ice cream at Avral Ice Cream Parlor, 193 Shengli Lu. It is also a few hours away from lovely Tianchi Lake.
4 Do read about the fascinating history of the Silk Road or the intrigues that took place here during the 'Great Game' era in the 19th century, when Britain and Russia struggled for control over Central Asia (and used their envoys in Kashgar to spy on each other).
5 Do pack for blistering days and freezing nights. Also be mindful of altitude sickness, which can stop you in your tracks even if you go to the gym five times a week back home.
2 don'ts
1 Don't forget that although Xinjiang is officially on Beijing time, it is so far west that the locals set their clocks two hours earlier. Get the two mixed up and you could be too early for dinner or too late for your bus.
2 Don't pack any liquids in your hand luggage when flying in and out of Xinjiang. Airport security was much stricter in Urumqi than in Beijing during our April trip, and is likely to be even more so before the Olympics in August.
This article was first published in Life!, The Straits Times on June 10, 2008.
