The Ball 2002

A little tale of how Phil became The Pied Piper of Kashgar for a day

Phil leads the children, or are they following him?

On a particularly windy day in the desert, we decided to go for a walk to find an internet cafe which was rumoured to have a copy of Photoshop. I thought it would mean I could upload and edit some photos without the customary difficulties we’ve experienced here in China. It turned out to be another wild goose chase, but resulted in a charming incident in the backstreets of old Kashgar…

China has felt like sanctuary after the tribulations of the journey from Kazakhstan, and after spending a couple of days in Urumqi and hooking back up with the Boy Noble, we collectively decided to make a 3000km detour to Kashgar, the gateway to the Karakoram highway, on the far western edge of the Taklamakan desert.

A warm welcome in Kashgar

Kashgar is another of those places, like Samarkhand and Bukhara, whose name resounds with mystery and allure. It lies at the very heart of the continent, close to the borders of Pakistan, India, Afghanistan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan and is rightly considered the crossroads of Asia…

The Ball arrives in China!

This was going to be a posting about some of our experiences in Almaty, but I’ve decided to skip writing about that for several reasons…