Excerpts from a Xinjiang-dominated diary

August 3, 2006 - between Beijing and Urumqi

...Still sitting on this train. Everyone's legs are starting to swell and the prostitutes across from me have staked out a spot on the floor with newspapers... The Uighur journalist across from me said I have beautiful eyes and should probably shave and that I look like David Beckham -- farcical -- and I have an extremely large Xinjiangnese gentleman looming over me, patting his swelling thighs and telling me to write. Will do...

August 27, 2008 - Lake Karakul, 200km from Pakistan

I wish I could continue on and leave my scheduled life in tatters. Pakistan will have to wait until I am older and possibly wiser. This lake is beautiful. The sun is going down behind rolling ochre and the white-capped Karakoram peaks are bathing in the glow. There is a Tajik graveyard with a pack of wayward camels. Chinese soldiers are building up the local infrastructure. People mill about... This is a border junction reached via a border city with a border province...