Cameos along a hot, flat, straight, highway through the Taklamakan Desert.

Cotton Road?
We are cycling the Silk Road. However- as we progress Eastwards, I do wonder if it should infact be called The Cotton Road as there is more evidence of that fibre than silk. All through Central Asia we cycled through miles and miles of cotton, saw the cotton pickers, had the cotton laden trucks thunder past us, and saw all the irrigation dedicated to that crop.
Evidence of silk was only in the rows and rows of deformed Mulberry trees along the route which over the years have been stripped every season to feed the hungry worms.
In the heart of the desert- I came across an old, sad-looking poor Chinese man pushing a hand cart. I stopped and engaged in sign language conversation. His cart was packed high with bags of empty plastic bottles and scraps of raw cotton which he had scavanged along the highway.
What a difficult, harsh way to make a living.
I cycled away slowly- wondering how he must view this new China- with its 1.3 billion people all entering the world of consumerism and leaving him caught in a time from a different era.

Campsite between the trucks and trains
Thunderous racket at night as I lay warm and snug in my sleeping bag.
Trucks to the right- and trains to the left - but above a silent brilliant sky with more stars than I felt I had ever seen.

Rain in the Desert
We have only been rained on once while cycling- and beyond belief, it was in the Taklamakan desert. We cycled 175 km that day and it was cold, miserable and we arrived besmeared with filthy road dirt.
But the next morning was washed clean, dust free and I even managed to record a photo of a reflection of the sky in a road side puddle