Destination Guide

The Silk Road: China, walked one oasis at a time

Wind lifts the sand; the oasis gives the road back. Welcome to the Silk Road. It starts at Chang'an, where people, Buddhas, silk, and spice changed direction on the same corridor. This is not one sight. It is the road on which China met the world, and the world walked in. What is the Silk Road like? Long. Dry. Open. All corridor temperament. The Hexi Corridor runs between the Qilian range and the desert, oases strung like beads: Dunhuang, Turpan, Kashgar. Sand on both sides, water in the middle, a pass holding the wind. Zhang Qian went out; the Buddha came in; the Mogao Caves painted the whole stretch on a wall. The culture is layered. Xi'an's walls still keep Chang'an; Jiayuguan is the door at the end of the Great Wall; Dunhuang's painted clay watches who comes through. Farther west, languages and naan ovens heat the same bazaar. Eat first: cumin lamb skewers, a bowl of hand-pulled noodles, then tear a round of naan. Chili gives way to spice; broth gives way to lamb. Then go oasis by oasis: out through the pass, into the caves, across mountains the color of flame, and into the lanes of Kashgar. The Silk Road is not scenery you pass. It is a road you walk until it reads.