Trip to Xinjiang and the Silk Road

I am now in Xinjiang, the westernmost province of China, which borders (among other countries) Pakistan and Kazakhstan. It is very different from the rest of China, as many of the people are various ethnic minorities, many of them Uighurs. They look Caucasian, like Afghanis (some even have blue eyes), are Muslim (so most women wear head scarves though not the full burka), speak a Turkic language, write with Arabic letters, and are generally culturally distinct. It is the region which was once the old Silk Road, so it is full of ghost cities, once centers of literature and art, now empty and abandoned to the desert. We visited two of these cities, Jiaohe and Gaochang: you can walk down the streets and visit the Buddhist pagoda, monastery or temple, but no one has lived there since they were sacked by nomad hordes in the 14th century. It is fascinating.