The Silk Road consists of many routes. However, none went through the Taklamakan desert. In Uyghur, Taklamakan means “only in, never out”. Silk Road routes went either north or south of the Taklamakan. From Lanzhou to Kuqa we followed the northern route. With the discovery of oil in the Taklamakan, the Chinese built a 300 mi road right through the middle of it, from Kuqa to Minfeng. That permitted us to make a switch from the northern to the southern Silk Road. Below is a map and a picture of our GPS showing our position 339 km north of Minfeng. More about the road and its construction below.

At the northern end of the Taklamakan desert is the Tarim Diversifolious Poplar Protection area. This protected poplar only occurs here and has two distinctively different shapes of leaves – on the same branch - as shown in the inset on the left.

The construction of a road in sand dunes is a considerable engineering achievement. It was built in the late 1990s using new technologies to anchor a road in floating sand. Another problem is that the road would be buried by constantly moving sand just above the surface. This was solved by planting millions of short, small-leaved rose willows, sacsaoul and buckthorns in a 10 meter-wide strip by the sides of the road to catch the sand. Irrigation is accomplished through drip irrigation lines on either side of the road. For that purpose 108 wells, one every 2 - 3.4 miles were drilled into the aquifer 300 ft below the surface. Each well has a little duplex house where two attendants live.

On top and on the right one can see the pump houses. Two people stay in these houses for 8 months working every day; after this they get 4 months off.

Now south of the Taklamakan we are on the southern Silk Road in Minfeng. From here to Kashgar we didn’t see any tourists. The young mother on the left proudly presents her little boy. Below are scenes that should give an impression of transportation, life, and people. Most are taken from our moving car. The Uyghurs are very poor.

We stopped in Yutian (see map above) and strolled through the main street/market. We took pictures of the butcher stands and the people. It wasn’t long before they got interested in the two of us. They were really friendly and loved to have their pictures taken.

The fellow on the left had a curious, questioning and inviting smile and it wasn’t long before we started to interact. He invited Juergen to sit with him on a bench. To show welcome, it is a custom from the senior man to stroke his beard which indicates hospitality. After pointing to each other’s beards, it wasn’t long before Juergen and the man were stroking each other’s beards.

The fellow above took Juergens baseball cap off and replaced it with a white Islmanic cap from one of the younger onlookers. Then he was ready for the real picture. They invited another older man to sit with them who refused to smile because he didn’t have any teeth.

We continued to Hotan (in more modern transportation than that on the left) and stopped at a silk factory. Bottom right shows the unraveling of the boiled cocoons and further down the dying and weaving of ikat (tie-dye) silk common in Central Asia. Further down are scenes from the market in Hotan.

In Hotan, we ate in a Chinese restaurant (it was Ramadan and the Uyghur restaurants were still closed since it was before sundown. Besides Juergen wanted his beer, a problem in Islamic restaurants). We didn’t realize that for the entire time we ate two Uyghur university students waited patiently outside. When we exited, they immediately approached us telling us they wanted to practice their English.

Both were charming and absolutely delightful and we had nice conversations while walking around town. We believe we both learned a lot from each other. This is the town square.

In another little place along the southern Silk Road (Yecheng) we stopped to see the market along the main street and decided to take the local “taxi” back to our car.

In Yarkand we visited the tomb of Amanni Shahan (1526-1560), a Uyghur queen who wrote the epic “Makam” which is considered the most significant piece of music in Uyghur culture.

Next to the tomb is the Altun Mosque dating from the 10^th – 19^th c.

This façade is all that’s left of a Islamic palace.