Eastern promises

Once, it was the most important trade route in the word - now it beckons the adventurous traveller. JUDITH DOYLE explores a famous part of Central Asia.

An art gallery in one of the world's biggest deserts? The Mogao Grottoes, near Dunhuang in the middle of the Gobi Desert, must surely rank as the strangest art gallery in the world.

Dunhuang lies in China's north-west. The honeycomb of caves, hewn into a cliff face 25kms out of town, contains a treasure-trove of Buddhist art. Thirty caves are open to the public.

The first of them date back to 353AD, when camel caravans loaded with their precious cargoes used Dunhuang as a staging post on the Old Silk Road. Drivers would donate shrines to buy safety on the terrible trek across the desert.

These shrines multiplied while the Old Silk Road was the world's foremost east-west trade route - there were about 400 by the 14th century. But as the maritime Silk Road gradually took over as the favoured trade route, their importance waned. Hungry sands swallowed the caves and they were forgotten for centuries.

Our guide takes us first to the 1000 Buddha Cave, where the statues and murals date from the eighth century. Its ceiling, plastered with layers of cement and clay, is painted with hundreds of identical Buddhas. At the back of the cave are brightly painted, life-sized statues of Buddha and his disciples.

We are told of how the caves were plundered in the 19th century, when European archaeologists got wind of buried treasure in the sands and began major excavations in the region.

The ancient scrolls and manuscripts in the next cave we visit were sold and removed. Murals were chipped off walls and tonnes of statues carted off. Despite this plundering, a bewildering mass of art remains - the official estimate is 2415 coloured statues and 45,000 sq m of murals.

Soon we're going from cave to cave through little zig-zag tracks cut into the cliff. One houses the largest indoor Buddha in China, standing 34.5m (that's roughly the height of an eight-storey building); another a 26m Buddha.

In others there are murals of goddesses dancing and playing musical instruments, huntsmen on horseback chasing deer, and camel caravans loaded with goods.

We experience our own camel caravan when eight of us, our camels looped together, ride into the sandhills of the Gobi Desert. It is just after sunrise and the sun is poised above the dunes like a giant Chinese lantern. Classic desert, this - not a blade of grass.

The area is called Singing Sands because the shifting of sand by wind is said to make a whistling sound. The sands don't sing to me, but our camel leader does, as he leads our caravan to nearby Crescent Moon Lake and a Buddhist temple in the sands.

We leave Dunhuang on the overnight train for our next staging post on the Old Silk Road: Turpan. Chinese trains have several kinds of accommodation: hard seat, soft seat, hard sleeper (six-bunk) and soft sleeper (four-bunk). After putting our luggage through a security tunnel (compulsory on trains, as in all aircraft) we find our soft sleeper.

There's no air conditioning, just a decrepit fan, and the temperature is in the 30s; thermos flasks and teabags are available, but no food. Worst of all, there are appallingly smelly toilets.

We roast that night, having turned off the fan before it does some damage. Opening the window simply lets in rank air (this is oil, coal, iron and steel country), while opening the door doesn't feel safe for four females.

So arrival at Turpan is welcome, as is Guili, our delightful Kazakh guide. As well as the nomadic Kazakhs, the nationalities here include Uygurs who form the majority; Mongols; Uzbeks; Russians; Tartars;and Han Chinese. It's 45 degrees in Turpan - Guili says the ground can get hot enough for eggs to be fried or pancakes to be baked.

It's a day for more caves, buried cities and tombs. The Bezeklik Caves, in a cliff above a river valley, had so many murals prised off by those archaeologists and faces defaced by Muslims that it is depressing, despite being a stunning site.

By donkey cart, past broken terracotta walls and arches weathered by centuries, we visit the nearby ruins of the city of Gaochang, built in the first century BC.

After these desert sites, we relish Grape Valley - Turpan is China's biggest grape-growing region. Under trellises dripping with grapes, we sample different varieties, including elongated grapes called mare's nipples. An ingenious underground irrigation system gives Turpan its fertility, making it a real oasis in the desert.

We fly the 1000km to Kashi, our final destination on the Silk Road. It's China's westernmost city, but feels totally Central Asian. It was a supply centre 2000 years ago and it still is, we discover, as we visit its famous Sunday market.

Donkey carts form a mad jumble as they arrive laden down with produce. Farmers spread out their eggs, spices, nuts, vegetables and fruit, especially watermelons. We quickly learn to step aside when we hear what sounds like "push-push," to avoid being run down by a donkey cart.

I watch a youngster selling red peppers, weighing them, haggling, then taking off his hat to put the money in it. Uygurs love bright colours and there are whole passageways of glittering fabrics. Hat stalls contain skull caps, prayer caps, fur-lined hats, pillboxes and the brown veils worn by Muslim women over head and shoulders.

In the animal section, goats are roped together; donkeys and horses are put through their paces; camels are prodded; sheep have their teeth examined. Everybody is yelling, braying, neighing, bleating or defecating.

The ancient Silk Road may have been tamed by sealed roads and improved hotels, but it still has the last laugh. We board our plane and, for a couple of hours, just sit. Bad weather is all we're told - a wind that wouldn't have worried this Wellingtonian.

But we finally manage to leave Kashi, the finale to our exciting, exhausting, enervating, exotic Silk Road trip.