The short drive to town rolls between slender trees along village byways. It's a pleasant garden amidst the desert. People walk leisurely along shady paths; they ride mules and bicycles. I remember the plane flying over grey and icy peaks, with a tinge of green in the river valleys between; dry rivulets stream from crinkled mountainsides and disappear into the beige sands of the great Taklamakan, a bleak vista sprinkled with moon rocks... I am sharing the taxi with a quiet, robust Pakistani wearing a very big, brown beard. He lugs a huge clothe sack, so maybe he's a travelling businessman. His face recalls the aerial mountains - especially the deep wrinkles filing into his eyes. Then we reach Kashgar; it feels ancient - a town all made of earthen bricks. The presence of China feels much smaller than in Urumqi.

I arrive at the Seman Hotel. Here's a place that was designed to be a hotel. The lobby is vast, dark and such a naturally cool temperature - without electrical air-con! The lobby invites you to stroll lazily across it. Yes, the whole atmosphere is redolent with a well-aged identity still intact; it emits that trace of intrigue, unexpected romance and adventure. The desk girls are friendly, too. They even expect me to change traveller's cheques! Is this really China!?

I meet someone to talk to at this hotel, a young guy from Singapore travelling all Asia. I unpack and he rambles on about his new Japanese girlfriend, his adventures and the food we all need. He's skinny and mildly effeminate, yet masks this with a sometimes serious tone and a manly mien. Generally he's a friendly introvert in desperate need of converse after days alone on busses and trains. You discover that solo travellers often talk incessantly after a week or two alone; it's a necessary compulsion. I think psychologists should recommend travel to pretty places and camping outdoors as remedies for inert depression and chronic social silence.

Across the traffic circle from the hotel is an excellent Muslim restaurant serving generous lamb shish-kebabs: the succulent, fatty mutton is seasoned with coriander, caraway seeds, chili powder and perhaps cumin, too. I over-eat in preparation for the long trek across emptiness into Tibet. It's Friday. So that gives me three days to gorge myself until I set out across the desert on Monday...

You must realize that I've carried a lot of equipment with me. I have four packs on the bike, a tent, and a sleeping bag: it all weighs at least 35 kilograms. I have a camera, 3 lenses, 25 rolls of film, a notebook, maps and cold weather clothing: nylon pants, synthetic long johns, a flannel shirt, a down-fill vest, a thick turtle-neck undershirt, a wool toque, insulated gloves and heavy 100% wool socks. I have food and three water bottles. The bicycle is new - light but very strong - made in Japan, and designed for making long distances easy.

The Kunlun Mountains lay below Kashgar. They represent a formidable obstacle. Beginning some 300 kilometres south of Kashgar, the icy peaks wall-up the entire southern length of the Taklamakan basin for hundreds of kilometres east and west. In between the city and wilderness are several oasis villages and one city called Yecheng, or Kargilik in local dialect.

Paul, the guy from Singapore, decides to come along for a walk. His skin is deeply tanned by summer travel. He's unblemished because he's young and so typically oriental: all Chinese have smooth, depthless flesh, unmarred by body hair. In the dark, you often wouldn't be able to tell a young man's leg from a woman's. We head for the Id Kah Mosque, both quite happy to wander in any direction we please.

Kashgar is a fabulously old town. Many of its homes are constructed from mud and straw: it's amazing how the tawny dry colors of the desert earth rise up into human dwellings. I notice that the sky doesn't have yesterday's really pure, translucent blue. The rain is two days past and now the atmosphere is hazy again, full of dull desert dust.

Kashgar is 1300 metres above sea level and that makes for hot days and cool summer evenings. The main streets are shaded with old trees, larger than the slim ones growing out of town. In the city, the main arteries mimic the design of modern Chinese towns: walled compounds pocketed with little shops and sporadic gates. But few new buildings have been built in Kashgar, except for hotels. Surrounded by the square avenues, the crooked alleys of the old town seem like ribs joined to a humped spine. Many of the old houses hide quietly behind tall mud walls.

The character of a civilization is revealed in its most changeless aspects. The walls of Asia stand tall and will not come down! If you desire a glimpse beyond them, you must sneak inside or beg permission. As we stroll up the lane, Paul and I glimpse a housewife. She works beyond an open, heavy wooden door. The woman wears a long dress, all black so far as I can see, and her head is draped with a brown shawl. She's in the middle of her courtyard and the potted flowers turn up their brilliant yellow faces. She hangs her washing, looks concentrated. I catch her attention and motion that Paul and I want to come in and have a look. She smiles and shakes her head and closes the door.

We have better luck a few steps ahead as we come upon some bread shops. Uigur bread takes in two basic types: a bagel-shaped thing, dense and as hard as a soda biscuit - it's baked to last a couple of weeks without going stale; the other type resembles a flat pizza pie without any toppings. The bread is dotted with sesame seeds and a thick braid of dough around the rim. Always steaming hot at the shops, best eat the stuff while it's still tender and chewy.

A tiny old lady with an expression midway between desperation and crafty glee approaches me as I buy a fresh piece. I cannot resist the plea of a poor old lady, clad in tattered shawls. Her flesh is so hollow. So I give my bread to her and buy another. Her face defines the essence of human experience: despair vanishes and the smile she wears is joyful, grateful, even triumphant. She knows her hunger alone was enough to capture my heart. Something stirs in me - the beginning of an insight - one that the Western mind is unwilling to realize. My wish for knowledge is a query I can't answer. What do they know about me that I don't see? Perhaps their poverty is possessed of a wisdom that my affluence cannot learn, an inarticulate thing, precisely in the metamorphosis of her human face. Despair reigns a moment before joy wakes up. Is there time yet to understand what my good luck prevents me from learning?

Paul and I walk on. There are many tribes here. One lady stands out. She wears a brown shawl, placed squarely on top of her head. It drapes over her breasts and down her back. The yarn is soft but woven in big loops, so I suppose she peers through the filaments. Amazing. But as for what she looks like - I suppose only her mother, sisters and husband know. Amid all the local people in the market, I notice only one Chinese girl riding a bike. She wears a white cotton dress on pale skin. A large floppy hat sits low on her brow, her lips are painted into a smug, charming smile. She zooms quickly past.

The daily market appears knotted around the hub of a T-intersection. Bicycle cabbies and street hawkers roost around the corners. Arab writing is all over the signboards. The old shops are small and look worn-out. Yet, the style of modest wealth still seems resplendent in their old designs. These buildings must have seemed more grand long ago. The phenomenon isn't new, is it? The sense of displacement - of old things by new ones - often responds to the sheer size and scale of construction, at least as much as to the vintage of each building's claim to a modern style.

Perhaps the measure of all things "urbane" remains one of our greatest social illusions - merely a function of relative size and the proximity of familiar sensibilities. But the scale upon which we build our belonging to a community is hardly indicative of our more pure, innate sensitivity. Our individual perspectives are reducible to the detached subjectivity of the rootless world citizen, who knows not only one city, but all cities as one! In this respect Kashgar also mixes its metaphors, and time melts away into something especially indistinct, and so you may have to guess where and when you are!

On the corner, curious Paul responds to a beckoning gent content under a beach umbrella beside a vast bin of green and yellow granules. With a broad smile, he rolls the "seeds" into a slip of newsprint paper and hands the cigarette to Paul with a match. Not anything like tobacco. We've never seen it before and it tastes tart and hot. The aromatic herbal mixture is hard and crunchy and it burns hotter than soft tobacco leaves. It would take time to acquire taste for this, and I don't want to; I'm afraid of searing my lungs.

The street is lined chock-a-block with tiny stalls. A couple of workshops produce ornate brass and wooden treasure chests, most probably for stashing away the dowry of newly-wed women. The brass reinforcing the chests is geometric. Designs on teapots are organic, like paisley. Here are a dozen men making clothe caps. They copy each other's design again and again. The most popular cap finds its origin in lands distant from central Asia. It looks like the cap some men in England, Sicily and Greece wear to this day. Perhaps the proper name is a "squire's cap," a riding cap, or a huntsman's cap: the visor attaches to the brim with a snap, making it look like a circular wedge. It's made of fine woven cloth: grey plaids and tweedy browns. Did you ever see the syndicated comic called Andy Capp? The strip was an on-going visual pun about Andy's frigid estrangement from his wife: she always booted him out for not paying up, and so he always ended up beside a short-skirted blonde with big knockers at the local pub. Andy's is the same cap produced by the haberdashers of Kashgar. The 5 dollar hat is too hot for me and for most local men, too. In summer, the local guys prefer white cotton skull caps and simple, square beanies.

We pause to swill beer beneath a shady umbrella. Nearby the Id Kah Mosque easily endures the heat. A few hundred years old, the portal is an arch done in bricks and glossy ochre tiles. Several men lounge about the portal: most of them are aged. They've come to Kashgar especially to see the mosque. Some of the oldsters have long grey beards and wear tattered robes darkened by dirt and travel. We go inside the gate. Three very old fellows watch us earnestly from within the portal. One has big black leather boots. Where's his trusty steed? The fellows sit between plaster painted inscriptions naming their faith. This isn't what I'd expected. Middle eastern mosques are vast white structures with elegantly slender pillars; inside them a huge open space prevails. But beyond the portal of the Id Kah, there is no ceiling. Instead, a garden of trees is planted in orderly rows. Tiny waterways flow between the slender trees. Two gazebos sit in the middle. Nobody but Paul and I seem to be here. Oh, but one bum lies on the sidewalk: he's definitely a Russian because his skin is pale, his grey clothes are dirty, and a drowsy grin below his nearly shut eyes seems to betray some small awareness of our presence. This bum's hair is grey and if he knows nothing else, he's quite happy that summer is here. Inside one of the gazebos some four Uigur men discuss a business deal. The garden paths are silent, and so are the trees, slivers of darkest green. We walk to the back and discover the prayer hall on a raised floor less than two metres above the garden. It's big enough for two hundred worshippers. The roof is supported upon fluted pillars. These delicate arabesques set upon gothic-like arches remind one of a world built further westward. It's so peaceful, why don't all the men come on in off the street to enjoy this lovely garden? I suppose they respect their holy place and enter only to converse with their god.

Outside the mosque is the gold jewelry market. It's a lot of shops along a very long, narrow path. Quick appraisal of the scene leads you to conclude that half the fellows have set up shop because they've seen others make a good living at it. A lot of goldsmiths produce rings, necklaces, bracelets and earrings, all in 24-karat gold. A popular design for earrings is a small golden ball, and it looks suspiciously like a dropping: it's precisely the same size and shape as one excreted by a full-grown goat. Undoubtedly, the goldsmiths presume that foreign tourist ladies are sufficiently in the dark not to recognize exactly what they're buying, perhaps a cruel and punishing twist on the cliche, "filthy rich..." Other types of earrings are curly-cues of wire that mimic flowers; this style is most popular with local girls and matrons. Gold is very much expected by women in Xinjiang: amorous men must perform obeisance to lovers and wives alike. Women take good care of what they get, too. They enjoy strolling by in the afternoon to have a favorite smith wash their jewelry in a boiling spirit bath: 24 karat gold and raw silver require frequent cleansing to revive their lustre. I want to buy something. For about 40 dollars you can buy a gold ring and a shiny black sliver of stone like a piece of wild rice.