Over the mountains to China

The end of the Soviet Union! No more Ladas piled with furniture, crumbling Soviet concrete or forlorn statues of Lenin. Instead we've stepped forward in time to huge supermarkets with automated lockers, solar-powered mobile phone masts and spookily silent electric mopeds. There's still the odd yurt, but it's likely to be made of concrete.

Uzbekistan might have the key silk road cities but the last couple of weeks have been better for conjuring up camel caravans of the mind. Osh bazaar in the southwest of Kyrgyzstan is said to be "older than Rome" and seems completely out of proportion with the size of the town. Among the mass of stalls we found the fatty bottoms of the local sheep hanging opaque and rubbery like actors' prosthetics and jars full of wriggling leeches.

A few days later we were in a taxi winding deep into the mountains along a secretive valley to Tash Rabat, a 15th century caravanserai. The equivalent of an old coaching inn in England but built around a big domed roof, it's still surrounded by horses and yurts, as well as the occasional party of picnicking Kyrgyz. After a night in a palatial yurt with glowing stove we stomped our way up and over the pass, close to 4000m, to Chatyr-Kol, a long icy lake where the shepherds' children used up our camera batteries photographing themselves and their donkey and I helped milk a yak.

The next morning while we were eating (a very dairy-based) breakfast it started to snow. The traders of the past would have trekked round to the mountain passes on the other side of the lake but border politics meant we had to hike back and get a car. It was probably for the best; it's 70km from the border to the official Chinese immigration post at the foot of the hills and we ended up waiting for hours while men in masks searched every inch of Tom's bag.

The Uighurs who live in this part of China are muslim like other central Asians and their traditional lifestyle is pretty similar with mud-walled houses, old men with wispy white beards and funny hats, countless mutton kebabs and bustling bazaars. Nonetheless the march of modern China seems pretty relentless and much of Kashgar's "old town" is a living museum with ticket offices and explanatory signs.

We've spent our time resting aching muscles and meandering the streets. I've also got a new and possibly mis-judged Chinese hair cut. Don't think they were very used to wavy hair (see photo on Tom's page).