Birch Trees on the Horizon

Nowhere does life imitate art as splendidly as on the Trans-Siberian. As the train cuts its way through the wide open steppes, my compartment window frames a view that is pure Rothko. The pale blue of the sky, applied with a coarse brush, shows traces of the canvas underneath. Here and there, the golden sheen of dry grass shades into the bottle green, almost black, of a hidden base layer. A sliver of silvery white on bronze—birch trees on the horizon—keeps both blocks from blending into one another. Motion throws the picture into a pastel swirl: the birch forest advances and retreats in waves, in the foreground dark blotches flash by. A thicket, perhaps, or a patch of fresh grass. As the hours evaporate, the impression takes hold that this is the way the world must have looked on God's drawing table: a composition of frayed rectangles waiting to be filled in.

A Siberian dacha

A similar sense of detachment envelops me when I tell people about my trip. Stopping off in relatively popular tourist hubs—Ulaanbaatar, Lake Baikal, Moscow—means you're bound to run into fellow travellers, and sooner or later conversation inevitably turns to the why and how of our vagrancies. When it's my turn I always hear myself assume a matter-of-fact tone of voice as I state that I cycled from Holland to Beijing and that I'm now taking the train back. Most people are completely bowled over. 'You cycled to Beijing?' Their disbelief couldn't be greater had I told them that I measured out the distance with a spoon. I always try to play things down by pointing out that thousands have made similar or even greater trips and that thousands will follow, that there's really nothing to it, that it doesn't take more than a bit of time and determination. Nothing embarrasses me more than the praise people are only too willing to heap on me. It seems undeserved.

This is no false modesty on my part. At least, I don't think it is. An undertaking like this doesn't require superhuman strength. 24,000 kilometres sounds like a lot, and it is, but what strikes the uninitiated as a veritable odyssee ultimately boils down to a series of very manageable day trips. Any couch potato can do it—take that from the biggest of them all. Nor does it call for a great deal of courage. We like to think of the world as a treacherous place where danger lurks around every corner and you should count yourself lucky if you make it through another day. And for all I know, that may well be the case. All I can say is that not once in the past two years have I found myself in a tight spot. Wherever I went people seemed genuinely happy to see me and often went out of their way to help, even—no, especially—in those places we like to think of as seething with gun-toting nuts. Tea, lunch, wrong directions, a place to sleep: people will go to any length to help a stranger on a bike. If it weren't for them, this trip would have ended before it had begun.

Babushka selling dried fish on train platform

Then again, perhaps it's me who's got a crooked view on things. Perhaps I shouldn't be so dismissive of all the incredulity and praise. The thing is, allow yourself to be swallowed up by whatever it is you're doing and you quickly lose sense of what it signifies to others. A sous-chef or a software developer may think nothing of the work he does—it's his job after all, something he does to make ends meet—but it's nothing short of miraculous to be able to start with nothing and end up with a sumptuous dish, a working application. Cycling to the other side of the world is infinitely more straightforward, yet, for all my protestations, not as straightforward as I've led myself to believe.

Staring at the shimmering Rothko in the window frame, I'm reminded of something Paul Theroux, that great train buff, once wrote. 'Travel is flight and pursuit in equal parts.' Makes it sound like a cocktail recipe. But there is something to it. It explains why the story of a boy who one day hops on his bike only to return two years later appeals to so many people. After all, we all have something we would like to flee from, we all cherish dreams as yet unpursued. What Theroux's recipe doesn't account for is the ephemeral sense of placelessness that separates these impulses like a row of slender birches on a distant horizon. It only comes about when you manage to forget whatever it was you left behind, when the electrifying splendour of the here and now eclipses even the most fanciful of your dreams, when nothing in the world matters but the sun on your skin and the road ahead, which knows no end.

Dazed

What to do with yourself when you've just wrapped up a two-year bicycle trip through Europe and Asia? Not much of a head-scratcher when the finish line of that trip happens to be Beijing. Little more than a provincial backwater fifteen years ago, China's capital now easily holds its own on the stage of glitzy world cities. Things move fast here. So fast, in fact, that in certain neighbourhoods it's easier to find a plate of penne alla siciliana than a bowl of stir-fried noodles. And it doesn't stop there. When it comes to basic necessities such as Belgian waffles, fresh coffee and pints of creamy Guinness, Beijing has everything the Chinese hinterland lacks. Even people with a decent command of English are readily available.

Sharing the fun

Strangely, though, the effect Beijing had on me was far from invigorating. The first few days after my arrival were spent in a daze. I would sleep until noon and still feel too tired to leave the hostel, let alone engage in some serious sightseeing. When others were having lunch, I would show up for breakfast and spend the remainder of the afternoon working up an appetite for supper by watching silly films or thumbing through one of the Dutch novels I found lying around. Body and mind approached a state of complete shutdown. I didn't get it. Though rougher than expected, the ride from Taiyuan to Beijing hadn't presented me with anything out of the ordinary. I'd felt as fine as ever. In hindsight I realise it must have been just that. Set yourself a goal, something you truly want to accomplish, and you can draw on reserves you didn't even know you had. Adverse circumstances only steel your determination. With cycling it's no different. No matter how hilly, lengthy, windy or sludgy the ride, there's nothing a good meal and a few hours of shuteye won't fix—at least temporarily. But it all adds up. It may not happen until the checkered flag falls, but one day that score will have to be settled. It's then you realise that you aren't the tough cookie you thought you were.

A little alone time

Perhaps it was just as well. My first days in Beijing coincided with something that is known as Golden Week: a week-long holiday that follows National Day on October 1. Now, the Chinese don't get many days off, but when they do they tend to make the most of it. The entire nation crams itself into anything that can fly, ride or sail in order to be set loose on the country's major sights. The word mayhem didn't even begin to describe the situation in downtown Beijing. The narrow lane where my hostel is located was swarming with ecstatic out-of-towners, many of whom sported little Chinese flags on their cheeks. Around the corner, on the street leading to Tian'anmen Square, things were even worse. Thousands shuffled along pavements that were divided into lanes, and the metro station at the southern end of the square was closed—probably to prevent people from trampling each other to death. At night, the hostel bar buzzed with stories not of the splendours of the Summer Palace or the Forbidden City but of the human gridlock that made sightseeing all but impossible.

It wasn't until I went to the International Post Office on the second ring road that the fog in my head cleared a bit. It must have been the look on the face of the lady behind the counter that did it. She sized up the bicycle I'd just wheeled in and shook her head. 'You want to ship that?' she said. 'Do you know what they will do with it?' She raised her arms above her head and pretended to drop a heavy parcel from a ten-storey building. 'It will probably get damaged, so we need you to sign a few forms.'

Time to say goodbye (or farewell?)

I slowly started taking apart the bike, wondering how much it would make at the scrap yard. Fortunately, the man in charge of the packing staff was very helpful. He got off to a bad start when he insisted on using a hammer to remove the handlebars, which, as far as I know, can't be removed at all, but soon made up for it by lovingly bubble-wrapping each part I handed him. When the bicycle box I'd brought turned out to be a shade too small, he niftily crafted an accommodating hump with the help of some cardboard and a few miles of tape.

Back at the hostel I sat down on my bed and picked up the no-brand backpack I'd bought the day before. With most of my stuff shipped off—tent, sleeping bag, camping chair, pots, stove, spare parts—it felt incredibly light. I pictured myself aboard the Trans-Siberian, gazing out over endless steppes, something weighty like War and Peace in my lap. Thousands of miles and I wouldn't have to lift a finger. Made the past two years look a bit silly.

Suddenly a little alarm went off in my head. I would be leaving in five days. That left me with, well, five days to explore a city as massive as Beijing. I checked my phone. Five pm. Too late to do anything, really. I stretched out on the bed. Four days is plenty of time.

Trophy Shot

Day 1: Monster (Holland)

It doesn't take me long to realise that the man in the safety jacket isn't part of the welcome committee. The nasty glare he's giving me hardly suits the occasion, and then there's that flag in his left hand, pointing away from the northern end of Tian'anmen Square rather than towards it. What's more, the flag is a faded orange, not the checkered black-and-white one would expect it to be.

There have been times these past two years when pretty much all that kept me going was daydreaming about the end, about the day I would finally make it to Beijing. 'And a splendid day it will be,' I would tell myself. 'I'll rise at dawn and go through the motions one last time: open foodbag, stuff myself with whatever I happen to find inside, slip into the translucent remains of my lycra outfit, pack my panniers, load the bike, set off. On the road there will be the merest hint of a tailwind, just enough to take the edge off pedalling. Soon, the smiling hills give way to the first suburbs. But riding into Beijing won't be daunting. When the road widens and flyovers spread their tentacles, familiar faces will pop up around me. The faces of the cyclists I've met along the way, each on his or her own bike, and we'll cover the final miles together, and before us traffic will part like the Red Sea, and people will line the streets to cheer us on, and we'll slap each other on the back and sip champagne and take funny pictures like they do in the final stage of the Tour de France, and we'll give the crowds what they want and ride a lap of honour around Tian'anmen Square, and there will be camera crews and flowers and telegrams from various heads of state, and we'll be all smiles when we tell Beijing what it takes to get there, and we'll never stop smiling.'

Well, I mean, exhaustion does funny things to your mind.

The man in the safety jacket doesn't budge. He's positioned himself right in front of my bicycle, blocking the way to the spot where I most long to be: the top of the square, where Mao's portrait guards the entrance to the Forbidden City. I look him in the eye. No champagne, no telegrams, not even the tiniest of bouquets. That's fine, I think, it doesn't matter. But no one will deny me my trophy shot with Mao, no matter how many orange flags they're waving in my face. I slide back into the saddle, follow the direction he's indicating, and then describe a nice little U-turn while dodging six lanes of oncoming traffic.

Day 753: Beijing

A few pedal strokes later I'm there. I look around. No time for ecstatic celebrations. Things are getting serious. From both sides of the square white-gloved policemen are closing in on me. A Chinese girl on the other side of the fence—the heart of the square can be reached only via underpasses—comes to my rescue. 'You want your picture taken?' I slip her my camera, she clicks and hands it back to me. Then I'm off. Not the grand reception I've been dreaming of, perhaps, but for one glorious second Beijing belonged to me.

Red Tape and Black Coffee

It sounds wonderfully straightforward. One sunny afternoon you pack a few basic necessities, grab your bike and simply go wherever your fancy takes you. During the first year of this trip that really was all it amounted to. Europe, though frightfully expensive, is the perfect playground for cyclists. No borders, no conflicts: freedom pure and simple. Cross into Asia, however, and you'll soon find yourself facing red tape everywhere you look. I've been tailed by armed police, banned from motorways, forced to take buses, turned away at hotels and internet cafés, held hostage by the army, denied access to entire provinces—and the list goes on. 'Take it easy,' I keep telling myself at times like these. 'Tomorrow you'll look back on it and laugh. And if not tomorrow maybe next week. Or next year.'

Hong Kong: from the grandiose...

Having said that, one thing you'll never find me do is chuckle about is the never-ending visa hassle. Visas can make or break a trip like this. A rejection from the Iranian authorities, for instance, would have blocked the gate to Central Asia. And if the immigration office in Lahore hadn't granted me a generous two-month extension, I would have had to wrap up my trip then and there as the Khunjerab Pass was still snowed up at that time.

There is no predicting what will happen. You can trawl online travel forums for experiences posted by fellow travellers and spend hours drawing up lists of which visa offices to avoid and what background stories to fabricate, but that won't change the fact that you're at the mercy of powers that are whimsical at best. Take my last application. I entered the Chinese embassy in Islamabad empty-handed, merely hoping to find out what I needed for a valid application. Thirty minutes later I walked out with a pick-up receipt for a ninety-day visa. Emily, my Khunjerab buddy, tried her luck a week later, armed to the teeth with every single document they could possibly ask for. She only got thirty days. Why? That really is anyone's guess.

...to a more human scale

Under normal circumstances, those ninety days plus the thirty-day extension I pocketed in Xi'an would have given me ample leeway to ride to Beijing without having to overexert myself. Four months is a long time, even if you're looking to cross a swathe of land as chunky as China. But if the idea is to cycle to Beijing and, subsequently, leave the country in a manner that doesn't involve two wings and a runway—let's say by train through Mongolia and Russia—then you really need a bit more time to sort out all the paperwork. The only way that extra time can be had is by making a quick hop to Hong Kong. There, I was told, Chinese visas are handed out by the bucket. So I booked a ticket, left my bike in Taiyuan and tried not to give too much thought to the fact that for the second time I was taking a flight for the sole purpose of getting a silly sticker in my passport.

And here I am, sipping expensive coffee in a café on Hong Kong's waterfront as I watch an international set of lawyers and investment bankers file by. Handsome people, immaculately dressed. It's lunchtime. The coolly understated restaurant next door fills up quickly. Like any metropole Hong Kong is a place of haves and have-nots, though here the gap may be a bit wider than elsewhere. I think of the wretched apartment block where my hostel is located—the cockroach-infested corridors, the Pakistani hawkers at the entrance with their fake luxury watches, the Africans on the upper floors who only come out at night, the park across the street where Malay and Filipino women push around blond children in prams. How many of these people have a residence permit, I wonder.

I take out my passport and examine my new Chinese visa. So far that unassuming booklet with those silly stickers has opened every door I've tried. Despite my fretting. That's more, much more, than many here in this vast city could ever hope for.

Ghosts

Drip. Drip-drip. Thick drops are falling down. Two, three at first, soon followed by more. Within seconds the dusty pavement takes on the appearance of a Jackson Pollock-style drip painting—an ever-changing pattern of miniature pools, each with a corona of even smaller droplets. One lands on my head and immediately finds its way to my neck. I shiver. Out of nowhere umbrellas pop up, like mushrooms in a damp forest.

Pingyao after a downpour

I enter the tiny hostel where I'm staying and climb the stairs to the six-bed dormitory. By now, it's lashing down. On the landing a diagonal sheet of rain has found an open window. When I've finally figured out how to close it, I'm wet to the bone. The rain pounds the pane with angry fists, demanding to be let in. I press my nose to the glass. Outside, the sky is as grey as the slated roofs of Pingyao's ancient low-slung houses. Dragon-like chimeras guard the corners of the curled eaves, their beaks frozen in an anguished cry.

Even when it's pouring down there's no denying that Pingyao is lovely. Perfectly preserved Ming-era town walls embrace a warren of alleys lined with lavishly decorated two-storey mansions. And even though the paper lanterns that light the streets at night lend it a touristy feel, Pingyao is no open-air museum. It's a living, breathing town where tourists from all over the world rub shoulders with locals going about their daily business.

Still, there is something uncanny about the place. Sounds seem muffled, and a certain drowsiness envelops you as soon as you enter the gates. Perhaps it's the fact that the narrow streets are pedestrianised—a rare feat in China. Maybe it's the uniformity of the houses. Or could it be that the town is haunted? At night, it is said, the spirits of deceased citizens return to roam the age-old alleys.

Pingyao at night

'Is it still raining?' The sleepy voice of one of my roommates drifts up from the bottom bunk. I lift myself up. There is something about him that tells me he hasn't moved all day. 'I think it's letting up,' I say. 'Ah,' he replies cheerfully, but doesn't move.

And so the days turn into a dreary blur. In between showers backpackers drift in and out. For many, Pingyao is the last stop before Beijing. It's September; the summer holidays are drawing to a close. They're still here, but their mind is somewhere else. Their old life is beckoning. Playtime is nearly over.

'I'm going to Kathmandu first, then home,' a French girl tells me. She makes it sound as if Kathmandu is a place where only horrible things could happen. She smiles apologetically. 'It's not that I'm not looking forward to it. But I've been travelling for such a long time. I miss my family, my apartment.' She straps her backpack to her back, a bulging daypack to her front. Then she picks up a suitcase. Another smile. 'Too many souvenirs.'

I watch her leave. Through the window I can see fresh clouds come sailing in. Dark ghost ships in a leaden sky. Looks like rain.

Progress

Connected to my handlebar bag is a square sleeve designed to protect road maps from the elements. Two years of heavy use have left it in tatters. Once transparent, the sleeve now shrouds the maps I use in a yellow haze—the same kind of dirty yellow that hides much of eastern China from view should you bother to look at it from an airplane window. When it rains the paper soaks up the water through small holes around the grommets. A few hours of this and the web of red and yellow lines is as drenched as the road beneath my wheels.

A couple of days ago I rode off the edge of the map section that lay before me—always a happy occasion. I stopped, opened the velcro strip at the bottom of the sleeve, removed the map and turned it over. Something in the upper right-hand corner immediately caught my eye: a bold B, doubly underlined. There was no need to spread out the map. I knew what it was. B for Beijing. The finish line.

The Yellow River as it sludges its way through Lanzhou

I stared at it. There was no excitement, no rush of anticipation. In fact, as I got back on the bike, I started to feel annoyed. 'Three months,' I grumbled. 'I've spent three months of my life cycling from one end of this country to the other, and what have I seen? Sand in the west, soot in the east.' And it's true. Northern China is cut in half by a barrier that separates two very different types of landscape. This barrier is the Yellow River. West of it lies the lifeless wasteland that is Xinjiang and western Gansu, east a mind-boggling jumble of villages, towns, cities and metropoles. The transition was merciless. Shrubs and grit suddenly made way for fields and farms; the horizon disappeared behind dusty trees; and everywhere I looked: people. People standing in the doorway of low houses, people picking juniper berries, people carrying toddlers with a slit in the seat of their pants, people huddling around a group of mahjong players, people transporting fresh produce in motorised tricycles, people chatting with other people. The fertile soil sprouted more than wheat and corn alone. It sprouted people.

At first I thought things would ease up, that I would soon reach the kind of China that people come to China for. Not that I expected having to dodge stray pandas all of a sudden, but a bit of the China we know from scroll paintings and NatGeo documentaries would have been nice. You know: a riot of rice paddies, spiky peaks that rise up from steaming forests, the silhouette of a villager pushing a flat boat across a lake of liquid moonlight... My guidebook tells me these places exist, and so did a handful of backpackers I met in Xi'an. And I'm sure they do—in a few enchanted pockets in the deep south.

What do you mean 'pollution'?

But the reality is that China doesn't have time for empty romanticism. So what if cities are soulless collections of concrete boxes laid out along severe grid plans and the spaces in between these cities get smaller and smaller? So what if arable land is actually put to use? So what if factories and trucks and open-pit mines mire entire provinces in a blanket of dust? In less than a generation the Chinese have managed to lift themselves from abject poverty. They work, they consume and, on the whole, seem reasonably happy. A cynic will argue that they have traded the shackles of one system for those of another, that a life spent toiling in communes has been replaced by a life spent toiling to pay the bills. The ever-optimistic Chinese see it differently. They are reaping the benefits of social and economic change, and no one will stop them from moving on, from getting ahead in life.

I've made my peace with modern China. What it lacks in picture-postcard prettiness, it makes up for in energy and ambition. Even the stifling air pollution is something I've grown used to. When I look in the mirror after a day on the road, it's not soot I see on my face. It's the pollen of progress.

Temple Life in 6 Shots

There is precious little to distinguish one Chinese city from the next. Vertical slabs of concrete reach for a grey sky; the avenues, though broad, are always clogged with traffic; monstrous department stores and fastfood chains spew out scores of happy consumers; the sound of pedestrians hawking their lungs out is never far away; and even the parks are a tumult of shouts, smells and shoves. The only place to escape the hubbub is a Buddhist or Taoist temple. These are often located in the unlikeliest places—among leering apartment blocks or on top of a mountain overlooking the sprawling city below. Enter and you'll find yourself alone at last, alone amid a whirl of colours where the silence is only deepened by the sound of a quietly chanting monk.

Yin is silence, yang is noise

Courtyard of a small Taoist temple

Guardian lion protecting a temple

Main gate of Dafo Si in Zhangye

The scarier the better

Prayer flags and Chinese Wall

Clueless

One of the many delights of this trip is getting lost. It's not that I particularly enjoy taking wrong turns or putting in extra miles, but it often leads to pleasant surprises. I once asked a man in a shiny SUV how to get to Tehran. 'Tehran?' he said. 'Why go to Tehran?' Two small children in the back were giggling. 'Come home with us. We'll have lunch, I'll show you around. You can stay as long as you like. Please don't say no.' And I'll never forget that time in Spain when I wasn't sure whether the road I was on was in fact the right road. I stopped. There was not a soul in sight. After a minute or so a bus pulled over. An elderly lady dressed in conservative blue got off, her spine bent not only by old age but also by a leather suitcase she was carrying. I addressed her gently and asked for directions. 'Cross the river at the next bridge,' she told me in rapid Spanish, and in the same breath asked where I was from. I told her. 'And you've come all the way by bicycle?' I said yes. She tutted, took my hand and said something I didn't quite follow. Then she picked up her suitcase and walked off. When I opened my hand I found a plastic rosary. Now, I wouldn't even know how to say a Hail Mary, but that simple act of well-wishing touched me tremendously. I've kept it in the back pocket of my cycling jersey ever since.

Wherever you go, people can relate to a stranger trying to find his way. Language barriers aren't an issue. I always start with the local equivalent of 'hello' or 'good afternoon' to break the ice, have a go at the name of the place I'm looking for, and try to look a bit clueless. If this triggers a lengthy explanation in a language I don't know, which is usually the case, there's always enough pointing involved for me to get a sense of where I'm supposed to be heading. I thank the person who's come to my rescue, he or she says something to the effect of 'you're welcome' or 'don't mention it', and we're on our merry way again. It's human communication distilled to its essence, a successful exchange of information against the odds.

Chinese people doing Chinese things

Not so in China. The trouble starts when I try to catch someone's attention with a simple 'nihao'. I can see the panic flare up in their eyes. What, me? Before they get a chance to run I corner them and slowly state the place I'm looking for, taking care not to make it sound like a question. In Chinese, intonation is not the frilly thing it is in Western languages. My phrasebook has a good example of what happens if you get it wrong: mess up the tones of the word 'wàijiāguān' and you're introducing yourself not as a diplomat but as a rubber U-bend pipe. But no matter how hard I try, most people simply don't get what I'm driving at. Even if I do manage to get my point across, it often turns out to be a complete waste of energy. Not only is every syllable of their explanation lost on me, it's usually accompanied by such a confusion of gestures and exclamations that I end up none the wiser. 'So let me get this straight,' I will say. 'Do I turn left (I point to my left) or right (I point to my right)?' A single nod of the head. Yes.

More than ever I now depend on road signs. On main thoroughfares these tend to be bilingual, but on country roads they read like small puzzles. Several times a day I stop to match the Chinese characters I find on road signs with the characters on my Chinese map, which I then compare with the place names on my English map. Memorising them takes some imagination. The characters for the city of Xi'an, for instance, resemble a pi symbol taking a foot bath and a stick man crossing his legs. The trick here is to remember more than just the first character or you'll end up in, say, Pingyao rather than Pingliang.

This really is a wonderful country. The scenery can be stunning, the food is great and on the whole the people are nice. But in China even the most hardened traveller will sometimes feel like an illiterate deaf-mute left to his own devices.

Homework

On foot, on foot, on foot, on foot, on foot. The boy in the pink polo shirt has nearly filled a page when he looks up. I sit down next to him and eat my ice cream. We're surrounded by stacks of boxes filled with soft drinks and instant noodles. The wind is playing with the tarpaulin overhead. I sigh contentedly, glad to be off the bike for a minute. The boy, however, is determined not to be distracted from his homework. His face a mere two inches from the paper he picks up where he left off: after 'on' the horizontal stroke of the f, then the vertical stroke, the two o's—clockwise—followed by the t, in the same vein as the f. What is he practising, I wonder. His English or his Roman alphabet?

One step at a time

Sitting there in the shade I try to relax a bit. No more desert, I tell myself once again, though that's only partly true. Physically I've made it to the other side. But my mind is still busy catching up with reality. Even though there are trees all around, and people working the fields, and villages with small convenience stores, I'm still pushing myself as hard as I did in the desert, when I desperately tried to limit the number of days spent in between towns, and I'm still carrying enough water to extinguish a wildfire. Beneath all this is the inarticulate anxiety that tends to accompany you in hostile environments. No matter how often I told myself it was all just a game, that I could hail a car in case I ran out of water or spend the night in a drainage pipe if I didn't make it to a settlement before nightfall, everything in me remained geared to survival. That in itself was as exhausting as the miles I put in.

The boy looks at me again. Then he pulls a small exercise book from under his notepad and indicates a sentence. 'How do you go to school?' I read out aloud. There are two options: by bus or on foot. 'Do you go on foot?' I ask. He smiles but doesn't reply. Then he points out another phrase, and another. 'These are my friends,' I say. 'This is our classroom.' By now, his mother, who sold me the ice cream, has started to take an interest. Sensing that here is a perfect opportunity for her son to practise his skills, she tries to bully him into engaging in earnest conversation. The boy, preferring the monastic approach, picks up his pen and resumes his work: on foot, on foot, on foot. This infuriates his mother, who now begins to shove him around. I try not to laugh. Only when I get up to leave do I realise how right this little boy is. Rather than the frenzied 'by bus' mentality of his mother, who wants him to seize every opportunity and get ahead, or, for that matter, of myself, having just crossed a desert as if chased by demons, here is someone who chooses to take life as it comes. One step at a time.

Buddy

I've always felt that people who treat inanimate objects as though they were live beings with thoughts and feelings ought to be put on some kind of medication. You know the kind. Loners who think only their stuffed toy really understands them. Sad souls who say 'good morning' to the coffee machine. But having spent so much time with no one but my bicycle for company I'm beginning to see what makes them tick. We are social creatures. We need someone to talk to, a sympathetic ear. And if there happens to be nobody around anything will do, even a chromoly frame on wheels. Tough days on the road become a bit more bearable when I tell myself that my bike is suffering as much as I am. And after a nice long ride I like to pat it on the saddle and say: 'Well done'. To which my bike replies: 'Well, I'd never have made it without you'.

Actually, it's a miracle how well we get on. When I first walked into my local bike shop two years ago I knew next to nothing about bicycles, though I thought I did, having spent a week or two browsing online bike forums for bits of relevant information. The conversation I had with one of the technical chaps who worked there went something like this. Technical chap: 'You know, those Edelux headlights are really nice, but you'd be better off buying a battery-powered headlight and investing your hard-earned cash in a Chris King headset.' (A headset is the set of bearings just above the fork.) Me, repeating what I had just read in Stephen Lord's excellent Adventure Cycle-Touring Handbook: 'A headset is a headset. I'd rather have a decent light on my bike so I won't get killed in one of those unlit tunnels they have in Italy.' Technical chap, shrugging: 'Very well, have it your way.' Two years later, I still don't know what the added benefit of a Chris King headset would be. But I do know that obscene floodlight of mine managed to convince oncoming cars in many a pitch-black tunnel to stick to their own lane. Then again, my midrange headset could snap tomorrow and send me straight off a cliff.

And that's exactly what it is

What I'm trying to say is that, even though it was a nitwit like me who picked each and every component, the team at Van Herwerden managed to build a bike that turned out to be just right. There really isn't anything I would like to change, and for someone as finnicky as I am that's quite a statement. I love the way it becomes part of my body when I click my cleats into the pedals. I love the way it darts off when the traffic light turns green. I love the way it seems to suggest the right gear when the road suddenly tilts up or down. And I love the many faces it has. When it sits against a wall, basking in the sun, there is something unmistakably feminine about its curved handlebars, the delicate geometry of its frame, the dimples in the saddle. Sometimes it behaves like a grumpy old man who can't keep quiet about his ailments. Dry-dry-dry, it groans with every stroke whenever I've neglected to grease the chain. And when I turn it upside down to fix a puncture it's like a child holding up a bloody knee, patiently waiting for me to come up with a patch.

There is only one thing that worries me slightly. Unlike me, it doesn't seem to wear out. So far, I've only replaced the rear tire, the chain and a couple of brake pads. In fact, save for a few scratches on the paintwork it still looks new. If it weren't for me it could easily keep going for another two years, and probably much longer. I haven't yet broken the news to my buddy that we're reaching the end of our journey, that I'll have to disassemble it, put it in a box and ship it home. I'm afraid it will never forgive me.

The Beaten Track

If there is one thing most cyclists have in common, apart from smelly socks and tan lines on wrists and fingers, it's an unspoken yet deeply felt aversion to mass tourism. It's below them in so many ways that they couldn't even begin to list all that's wrong with it. Mentality, that's what it seems to come down to. They're travelling, don't you know, under their own steam no less. They're discovering the world on their own terms, finding meaning in out-of-the-way places that aren't listed in any of the guidebooks—nevermind that it says 'tourist' on each of their visas. Some even go so far as to avoid busy tourist hubs, tailoring their riding schedule to the state of their laundry rather than the vicinity of a major sight.

Though not wholly alien to this sentiment, I try not to let my moral superiority get in the way of taking in as much as I can of the vast array of cultural wealth that's strung along my route, even if it means queueing up in the heat or being forced to pay twenty times the regular admission fee (common practice in Pakistan). And why should I? The beauty of independent travel is that you're free to go wherever you want, and that includes staying right on the beaten track. After all, what is a visit to Verona without risking a neck hernia while gazing up at the jaw-dropping frescoes of its churches? Or an overnight stay in Bruges without getting up first thing in the morning to be crammed into a tiny canal boat along with a busload of elderly day-trippers? I did it and loved it.

Here in China, the rise of the middle class means that organised tourism is booming. Unfortunately, much of what would make a good tourist destination—historic city centres, for instance—has been knocked down in the rush to modernise. What remains is often dolled up to such a degree that it is hard to tell what has been restored and what is spanking new. Not that this really matters to the average Chinese tourist, who prefers the neat and tidy over the scruffy and dilapidated—in other words, over the way much of Europe looks.

Seems the soldiers have nipped off for a tea break

High up on the ramparts of Jiayuguan Fort, I realise that the Chinese might have a point. No need here to stare at a few weathered stones and press your mind to conjure up an image of the way it once looked. Jiayuguan Fort is real and it's as magnificent as it ever was. With its three squat towers and its double defence walls the fort sits at a location that could hardly be of greater strategic importance. This is where the Hexi Corridor, traditionally the only viable route from west to east, is at its narrowest. But the place also holds symbolic value: here, at the westernmost point of the Great Wall, ancient China ended. What lay beyond was the source of dark tales. Looking out across the wasteland through which I came, the historical significance of the fort makes itself felt in a way that few other places ever have. Scores of weary travellers before me must have heaved a sigh of relief at the sight of this fort. It signalled a return to a world of safety and civilisation.

Down in the central courtyard I get a taste of what that civilisation is about. A man with a crooked smile urges me to put on a plastic cuirass and shoot brightly coloured arrows at a couple of already badly mutilated straw puppets. Frowning, I follow the beaten track to the exit.

Buddha on a Bike

I don't want to harp on about how tough it is out here in the desert and how great the suffering, but as my days are filled with nothing but sun, sand and self-pity I'm afraid you'll have to bear with me one more time. Last week saw me make a little detour to Dunhuang, a sedate town in the southern Gobi that probably wouldn't exist if it weren't for the nearby Mogao Caves. This age-old temple complex, 'discovered' and subsequently looted by a handful of Western explorers at the turn of the last century, was once the centre of Chinese Buddhism. It's impressive as much for its dazzling murals and serene Buddha statues—some standing well over thirty metres tall—as for its sheer size: of the original thousand man-made caves some five hundred survive today. Of those I only managed to visit ten, and that took me the best part of a day.

Approaching Dunhuang

To get to Dunhuang I had to leave the main road leading to the mouth of the Hexi Corridor and cycle southwest for a day. The wind seemed to have anticipated this move: it was working against me as enthusiastically as it had on my west-east crossing of Xinjiang province. Fortunately, I had something to look forward to: a few days off, a bit of culture, something else than noodles for dinner. It also helped that there were two oasis villages along the way. In the first I gorged myself on watermelon, which is particularly good in these parts, and watched the melon vendor crack himself up with the 'romance' section of my Mandarin phrasebook. (Apart from the pretty universal 'Would you like a drink?' it has phrases such as 'You look like some cousin of mine', 'Piss off!', 'How about going to bed?', 'Don't worry, I'll do it myself', 'Easy, tiger!' and the rather anticlimactic 'You're just using me for sex'.)

Such lightheartedness seemed forever out of reach when I rode out of Dunhuang a few days later. I was cycling east on a narrow connecting road, and as the last houses disappeared behind me I noticed that the wind had turned yet again. And not only that. It seemed as though it too had taken a few days off, only to return nastier than ever before. Now a grit-laden gale, it took great pleasure in keeping my speed in the single digits and forcing me at times to ride with my eyes closed.

'What have I done to deserve this?' I groaned. 'Is this a case of bad karma?' I racked my brain but couldn't think of anything inappropriate I may have said or done on my tour of the Magao Caves. Torturing small animals or extorting money from poor old grannies aren't pleasures I usually indulge in, so what could it be? Bad luck? But is that possible? What are the odds of having to face a headwind every single day regardless of the direction I happen to be travelling in? Or is this how the human mind works? Could it be that we like to make a big deal out of unfavourable circumstances and simply fail to register those instances when the planets are aligned correctly and we get what we want without having to exert ourselves too much?

Melon vendor with a taste for the lurid

It didn't take me very long to realise that the way I usually deal with windy days—taking it out on lorry drivers who like to lean on their horn while overtaking me—wouldn't get me very far this time. For one, there was hardly any traffic on this back road. Moreover, the wind was so strong that it would be foolish to take a hand off the handlebar just to give the finger to a lorry driver with the mental capabilities of a six-year-old. I made a quick evaluation of the situation. Between Dunhuang and Guazhou, the next town on this road, there would most likely be nothing at all in the way of basic conveniences: no oasis villages, no settlements, no service stations. Without so much as a wall or a clump of trees to provide shelter it would be impossible to pitch my tent. And water... I shuddered to think of it. Even with the eight litres I was carrying I would have to ration myself.

As the day progressed the wind showed no sign of abating. I genuinely felt sorry for myself, which only made it worse. Then I thought of all those monks responsible for the marvel that is the Magao Caves. When they first started hacking away at the cliffside, they had no idea that their little project would evolve into one of the greatest artistic accomplishments of all time, that 1600 years later people from all over the world would throng to see the fruit of their labour. 'Just think of all the effort that must have gone into the creation of a single cave,' I told myself. The hammer and chisel, the oil lamps, the desert heat, the perseverance it took to cover wall after wall with thousands of near-identical miniature portraits of the Buddha. And then, when one cave was finished, they would move on to the next. And then to another. And another. And they kept at it for years, for decades, for centuries. Generation after generation, dynasty after dynasty.

'What is a day of pain in the face of such determination and sacrifice?' I asked myself. I divided the remaining hundred-or-so kilometres in a thousand units, using the little stone markers on the roadside to measure my progress. One marker for each cave. 'Now, the trick is to relinquish all desire for things of the world,' I lectured myself on the little I know of Buddhism. 'The pain you're currently experiencing stems from a longing for something you don't have. Forget about shade, forget about cold showers and the sound of clinking ice cubes. You should even forget about ever reaching Guazhou. Just focus on the next stone marker.'

Still, that was easier said than done. A hundred metres is a lot when the wind is giving its best to get you airbound. The on-board entertainment was pretty poor, too—I suspect that a few grains of sand messed up the intricate mechanism of my mental jukebox (see previous post). All I could do was count the pedal strokes. One-two-three-four-five-six-seven-eight, one-two-three-four-five-six-seven-eight. Over and over again, marker after marker. This actually proved to be quite effective. The counting induced a kind of semitrance that prevented me from spending energy on anything but pushing the pedals.

Two-thirds through the day my attempt at meditation in motion was crudely interrupted by something that appeared on the horizon. It was like the classic mirage you get in cartoons. It started with a fleck of grey shimmering in the heat, which as I drew closer took on the unmistakable outline of a petrol station. I instantly forgot about having to let go of the base cravings of the self and allowed myself to be swept away by heavenly images of cold-drinks fridges hopping around in air-conditioned rooms.

This clearly was a test, and as the building grew larger so did the realisation that I had flunked it. It was a petrol station all right, but one that was still under construction. No cold-drinks fridges here but stacks of building materials. No air-conditioned rooms but concrete boxes with paneless windows. I stopped, lay down on the floor and listened to the wind soughing through the empty shell. Then everything grew dark.

There is no yin without yang, no day without night, no heaven without hell, no beginning without end. Twelve hours after leaving Dunhuang I reached Guazhou (or Melon Town in English). And though I can't profess to have made much progress in terms of enlightenment, some kind of nirvana awaited me there.

It didn't take me long to find the town's budget hotel, but it soon transpired that the place didn't have police permission to accommodate foreigners. Acting on a hunch I decided to try my luck at a four-star affair across the street. As I walked through the revolving doors I felt horribly out of place. This was clearly the swankiest establishment for miles around—all crystal chandeliers and bellboys pushing around gleaming luggage trolleys—and I wasn't particularly looking or smelling my best. Nevertheless, the staff seemed delighted to see me. I was offered tea, and before I got a chance to frown at their rack rates I was offered a room for little more than what I usually spend at budget hotels. 'You are very important person,' said the smiley receptionist. 'Where are you from?' 'Holland,' I replied. 'Very beautiful,' she said. 'What, Holland?' 'No, you.' And my chapped lips cracked as I smiled my first real smile of the day.

How did I ever manage without this?

And it didn't end just there. I was doused with more tea, the manager came down to say hello and suddenly it was decided that only a deluxe room would be good enough for me. 'You are very important person,' the receptionist told me again. 'You are first foreign guest.'

When I entered the room I was close to tears. Chinese hotel beds usually consist of a piece of hardboard on legs with a stained duvet masquerading as a mattress. What I found was quite the opposite. From the thick rugs to the upholstered armchairs and the fluffy towels in the bathroom, everything oozed delightful decadence. There was a flatscreen TV, air conditioning, complimentary mineral water and, my favourite item, a tartan sleeve for the remote control. 'So much for relinquishing all desire for things of the world,' I thought as I stepped under the rain shower.

Spiritual enlightenment through purity of mind—the idea rather appeals to me, but I'm afraid I'm just too much of a sucker for life's little luxuries to really make it work.

Double-Dipping in the Desert

'Why am I doing this to myself?' It's a question that's reared its ugly head a thousand times over the last couple of weeks. Because the truth is: cycling hasn't been a whole lot of fun since I left Kashgar. Of course, I knew that my little excursion through the Taklamakan Desert wouldn't exactly be a walk in the park. That's how it goes with deserts: they tend to be pretty unforgiving places. In fact, the name Taklamakan is Uyghur for 'enter but do not come out,' and even today, despite the brand-new strip of tarmac that cuts through this godforsaken wilderness, that's precisely what will happen if you're not careful. Conditions here are so harsh that most of what you think and do during a day is directly related to survival. Water gets you a long way in that respect, and it's become a bit of an obsession. Before Kashgar I never carried more than 2.25 litres at a time. I've now cranked my water-carrying capacity up to 8 litres, and I never miss out on an opportunity to top up my depleted reserves, even if it means stopping to buy a single pint-sized bottle.

The long and not-so-winding road

However, the hardest part of traversing the Taklamakan Desert is not the lack of water, nor the heat, not even the ferocious headwinds that seem bent on blowing me back to Kashgar. It's the mind-numbing monotony of it all. Whoever designed the Taklamakan took a fancy to the no-frills approach. Unlike Iran, there are no rippled sand dunes to gasp at, no mud-brick villages and crumbling caravanserais to explore. It's grey and pebbly—the kind of greyness and pebbliness that tends to lose its charm after a day or two. Other than the black beetles scurrying around my feet during breaks and the lorries that roar by when I'm back on the road there is hardly anything for the eye to cling to. The little human life there is caters to the needs of people on four wheels: a petrol station every 200 kilometres or so, a layby where truckers gather to buy noodles from a man in a shack.

Being exposed to this kind of emptiness for days on end does funny things to your mind. Desperate to fill the void, it dredges up half-forgotten conversations, faces from the past—almost anything will do. I don't know how many times I've roamed the streets of my hometown, sat down again in my old room, reenacted all those awkward scenes that come with first love. I've made lists of all the vegetables I can think of (in Dutch, English and Spanish) and of the kids I went to school with (name and surname). I've gone back to the first section of this trip, trying to think of all the places where I spent the night. (I keep getting lost after Saint-Pierre-de-Cernières.) I've X-rayed my conscience, analysed my shortcomings, walked the roads not taken. Once you start there's no stopping.

This qualifies as a village on my map

When I grow tired of these games I switch on my mental jukebox. Of course, I could also take out my very real iPod Classic, which holds every song I own, but, being a masochist, I feel that real music would smooth the edges of an experience that's meant to be rough. Besides, I promised my grandmother not to listen to music while cycling, and it's bad form to break promises made to grandmothers. My mental jukebox sometimes shows me bits from my favourite TV-series. The mere thought of Seinfeld's George Costanza defiantly double-dipping his tortilla chips is enough to have me chuckling like an idiot. But most of the time it simply sticks to music. There is a drawback, though. I don't always get a say in what's playing. The Girl from Ipanema can suddenly segue into a Bach cantata, and then, just when I'm humming along contentedly, a radio jingle bursts in: 'Liever Kips-leverworst dan gewone leverworst, papapapapapapapaaaaa!' Another gripe is that it's not very strong on lyrics, so a song usually ends before it's properly begun: 'Roxanne / You don't have to put on the red light / Those days are over / You don't have to something something to the night.'

Before you start thinking that I may be losing it, let me tell you that these hundreds and hundreds of kilometres of emptiness have led to one or two moments of lucidity as well. When I'm not mulling over the past or fiddling with my mental jukebox I'm often dreaming of what lies ahead. Beijing is just around the corner, I realised the other day. The end of my trip... 'Hurrah!' my behind chimed in. 'No more saddle sore!' The rest of me also seemed pretty pleased at the prospect of wrapping it up. To be honest, I'm actively looking forward to my return, to be reunited with those I love, and I'm not saying that just because the past few weeks have been so challenging. If anything, life after this trip will be just as challenging, albeit in different ways. What it comes down to is that I'm eager to move on, to find out what else I can get out of this short life. And all it took was a ride across the desert to figure that out.

An Afternoon on Venus

'Stop, stop, stop!' my body screams. 'Push on, push on, push on!' my mind commands. I check my bike computer. Forty-eight degrees Celsius, another thirty kilometres to go. As the former figure rises steadily, the latter simply refuses to show a significant drop. Once again I give in to my body's desperate call for a break. I prop up my bike against a low cement wall and take a swig from the bottle of peach juice I've been keeping in the back pocket of my cycling jersey. It's vile. The sun has heated it up so much that 'refreshing' isn't the first word that comes to mind.

It's a day of extremes, and a very strange one at that. I'm crossing the Turpan Depression, which at 154 metres below sea level ranks as the third-lowest place on earth. That may sound exciting, but the funny thing about depressions is that there isn't a whole lot to see. They're not like mountains, which are visible from afar and can only be conquered with a great deal of effort. Conquering a depression requires no effort whatsoever. It's just a matter of cruising down and, well, that's it. The staying-alive bit that follows is where the real challenge lies.

Add a bit of water and grapes even grow in hell

It's hard to describe the heat that dominates life in the Turpan Depression. As long as you stay in your air-conditioned hotel room it's just about bearable, but out in the desert it doesn't take more than a minute to realise that you really shouldn't be there. It isn't so much the power of the sun that's overwhelming. Rather, every little thing around you seems to be radiating a heat of its own. The sand, the rocks, the mean little shrubs: they're all out to roast you alive. The relentless winds that sweep across the depression seem to be coming from a gigantic blow-dryer just beyond the horizon, parching your throat and eyes, turning the sweat on your skin into a crust of salt. Here in the Turpan Depression I realise that until now I've never experienced real heat. It feels extraterrestial, like an afternoon on Venus. It's heat redefined.

I crawl back on the bike and, slightly delirious by now, frantically swat at a question that keeps buzzing around my head: if crossing the place nearly kills me, what will it be like to climb back to the rim of this furnace?

Technical Issue

Two days before my health decided it needed some time away from me, I asked myself one of those silly questions that have a way of turning against you. Suppose something had to go wrong with either your bike or your body, which would you choose? Easy, I told my imaginary interlocutor. My body, of course. Correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't the body have this astonishing ability to cure whatever ails it? Don't go expecting it to deal with anything as cataclysmic as a brain hemorrhage, but the common flu or a nasty gash in the head are no match for the magic powers of your body. Just give it a couple of days and you'll be as good as new.

Now try that with a bicycle. 'Flat tire? Oh, let me just put it against the wall, it'll sort itself out.' If anything, that tire will be only flatter after a day or two. In fact, for its well-being my bicycle is wholly dependent on me, a clueless quack who can hardly tell his bottom bracket from his crankset. Just imagine what my poor bike must have gone through when I tried to fix my very first puncture. Having turned the patient upside down, I actually started taking snapshots of the rear wheel because I wasn't sure whether after removing it I'd be able to figure out how to put it back again. I guess it's like being wheeled into the operating room only to hear the surgeon say, just before the anaesthetics kick in: 'Don't worry, sir. We know how to cut you open, but we're still consulting the textbooks on the sewing-up part.' Not very reassuring.

Now, it's true that I've progressed since those early days. It takes me less than thirty minutes to turn a fully-loaded bicycle with a flat tire into a fully-loaded bicycle that's good to go. And, having reversed the sprocket on my Rohloff hub, I even managed to realign the chain tensioner. But some things never change. Strange sounds emanating from unidentified parts of the bike still give me palpitations. And when I'm unable to come up with an immediate solution to a technical issue, part of my mind is already working on an exit strategy: get bike on bus, book flight, go home, forget about the whole thing.

By contrast, I hardly ever worry about that other machine: my body. It's there, it always does what it's supposed to do and it never gives me trouble—apart from the occasional bout of traveller's diarrhoea and, quite curiously, a different skin rash for each country I'm in. Another plus is that it's low on maintenance. Just stuff it with calories, give it the odd scrub and make sure it's in a horizontal position at the end of the day. And—very important to those weight-conscious round-the-world cyclists—there's no need to carry any spare parts.

And then, as I rode into Korla, that trustworthy machine came to a sputtering halt. Rather than one or two parts, it felt as though my entire body needed replacing. There was a dull throb in my head, my neck and shoulders were locked in a painful clasp, my legs were filled with porridge and I was feeling low on sugar, salts and, above all, morale. It had been a long and hot day through the desert, though no longer or hotter than any other day. Still, caught in Korla's afternoon rush hour, looking for a place to stay, I found myself wondering if this is what heatstroke feels like.

A miracle of the human body I haven't mentioned is that it is capable of pushing back its own collapse. Mine got me to a hotel, where it managed to drag thirty kilos worth of luggage up six flights of stairs. Then, having closed the door behind itself, its defences went down. Fever jumped at it from a dark corner, and, just before I slipped into a twelve-hour nightmare marathon, news reached me that my bowels had decided to join the revolution.

And here I am, dealing with the aftereffects not of heatstroke, as it turns out, but good old dysentery. Which is not as dire as it sounds. Every hour or so my bowels perform some kind of Chinese contortion act, which is a sure sign for me to potter off to the shared toilets down the hall to turn one of the cubicles there into (quite literally) a bloody mess. But I'm not complaining. At least the bike is fine.

The Chopstick Shtick

'China is a land of contradictions,' a fellow traveller I met in Pakistan told me. I must have been immersed in the food that was spread out before us, because, unfortunately, I don't recall a single one of them. Not that it really matters; I can't even get my head around the one that I've stumbled upon myself. It's something I like to call the Chopstick Shtick and it goes like this.

Tentative beginnings in Tashkorgan

Each time I sit down in a little eaterie for a bowl of noodles, which has replaced rice with lentils as my main staple, I can't help but notice a little smirk on the face of whoever it is who's serving me. I've learnt to ignore this and focus on the food instead. I pick up my chopsticks, examine the bits and pieces that float around in the broth and set to work. Within a few minutes a faint snigger will make itself heard. Now, try as you might, but it's really hard to ignore this. You know that when you look up to find out what the hell is so funny, you're done for. All you can do is keep eating and pretend you're deaf until the moment the sniggering becomes unbearable and you cave in. This is the cue for the imp at your elbow to step forward and start commenting on the way you handle your chopsticks.

Personally, I think my chopstick skills have improved greatly since I entered China. I've never been a great chopsticksman, to coin a new phrase, but within days I found that the better part of that bowl of noodles actually ended up in my mouth rather than in my lap, and that's not something to be sniggered at. Today, I pick up the flimsiest shred of meat without even batting an eye.

For the Chinese, that is not enough. They see a foreigner with chopsticks, and for some reason that tickles them tremendously. A few days ago, one of the customers of the noodle place where I was eating started tutting and then demonstrated with great relish how it's done. He dived in, lifted half of the contents from his bowl and then gave me a triumphant look. 'Who eats like that?' I said. 'No one eats like that. You could never stuff all of that into your mouth.' Clearly, that was not the point. In fact, my indignance only added to the hilarity that spread across the joint like wildfire.

Working on my slurping technique

I looked around. People were using their chopsticks in the same way I did, with a great deal of slurping thrown in for free. As far as I could tell I had mastered the art of eating with chopsticks. Their thoughtless criticism was simply uncalled for. I tried to console myself with the thought that at least they hadn't brought me a fork, as some of the really sadistic noodle place owners like to do.

I'm not quite sure what the deeper implications of all of this are. But I think I've hit upon a pattern. Last week, looking for a bike shop selling tubes of a particular type, I asked a man on a street corner for directions. 'Xiūchē diàn,' I said. Bike shop. I could have asked for directions in Dutch or even in Klingon for all I care, and the reaction would have been the same: a blank stare. 'Xiūchē diàn,' I tried again as the man began to edge away from this stranger speaking in tongues. Then I showed him my little phrasebook and indicated some Chinese characters. 'Aaah, xiūchē diàn,' he exclaimed, and his expression changed instantly. To my amazement, the phonemes that left his mouth were exactly the same as the ones I had uttered. I swallowed hard. His subsequent directions were lost on me.

Now, what I want to know is: is the above an example of the impenetrable humour that the Chinese are famous for? Do they get a special kick out of messing with a foreigner's head? Or am I simply blind to the finer subtleties of Chinese culture?

Kashgar in 6 Shots

Most countries turn their nose up nowadays, having had their fill in the past. In China, however, good old colonialism is very much en vogue. And it's not happening in some remote overseas territory no one has ever heard of, but right here, in China itself.

The thing is, China is home not only to the Chinese—or Han Chinese, to be more precise—but also to dozens of ethnic minorities. Some of these are well-known and well-loved the world over. Take, for instance, the people of that region in the southwest whose name shall not be mentioned. You know the place: mountainous area where chaps prance about in red dresses and a certain silver-haired American actor appointed himself as Minister of PR.

North of this region lies Xinjiang, a vast desert-like province the size of Western Europe. Xinjiang means 'New Territories', and, knowing that it holds enough oil and natural gas to fuel China's economy for a long time to come, this is exactly the way Beijing treats the place. Meanwhile, Xinjiang's Central Asian minorities—Tajik, Kyrgyz, Kazakh, and, especially, Uyghur—increasingly find their culture swamped by Han Chinese moving in from the east. Before the communist takeover in 1949 the Uyghur population made up 90 percent of the province's total population. Over the years, that number has dwindled to well below half. Unsurprisingly, mass migration has led to cultural dilution. Tensions came to a head in 2009, when severe riots in the city of Ürümqi left 200 people dead.

In Kashgar, the divide between the Han and Uyghur populations is painfully real. Minarets are dwarfed by modern highrises, underground shopping malls pull in customers from the street-level bazaars, and the characteristic houses in the old town are being razed to make way for the kind of faux-historical architecture that Han Chinese tourists are so fond of. Attempts have even been made to sanitise Kashgar's famous Sunday Market, where for centuries people from all over Central Asia have converged to buy and sell pretty much anything you can think of. But this is one part of the country that the Han Chinese have yet to conquer. The brand-new pavilion where a couple of traders have decked their stalls with garish souvenirs is swallowed up by the real market that surrounds it—a sprawling orgy of colours, smells and sounds that will never die down.