Ostragon spent a strange night dreaming of space and time, wandering through the great expanse of the stars, touching the sun and the moon, brushing with his hand the dust of comets, touching, with the tip of his fingers, the face of God Himself... he woke up to his room mate grunting in the bed next to him, who had brought back one of his Chinese english students, a girl with whom he had become extremely drunk the night before and with whom he had spent the night crammed together in a single bed...

He left for the airport, finding the bus; he now had a full military bergen, having left his collapsing trail-a-suitcase behind at the Hostel.  This suited him fine and he was looking forward to his adventures in Xinjiang Province.  He had booked ahead into a Hostel in Urumqi and the girl there had spoken good english and given him a good feeling about what was to come.

The flight was long and arriving in Urumqi, he saw a sight he had not seen since his arrival in Beijing: blue skies and white clouds and in the distance, in the space between the buildings, snow-capped mountain peaks.

Urumqi, ancient city of the silk road, sits in a basin north of a large mountain range which cuts the state of Xinjiang into two from east to west.  The southern part of the state consists of the Great Taklmakan Desert and the towns which make up the Southern Silk road.  Both the Southern and Northern Silk roads meet up in the West, at Kashgar, ancient crossroads and cultural city, at one time one of the wealthiest cities on earth, now riven by camels, goats, donkeys and the screams and shouts of its famous Sunday Market.

Urumqi has grown much in the recent past, with an influx of Han Chinese, supported by the Central Government, in an attempt to Chinese-efy this very un-Chinese outpost of the Nation of Han.  Because the East of China is very poor in resources, except maybe coal, the state of Xinjiang is of strategic importance to the Party, as it is their only source of domestic natural gas, oil and mineral ores.  There is also considerable scope to develop wind energy in the state, which has already been taken to an advanced level in the desert plain to the South East of Urumqi.

Ostragon found his way with the help of his Taxi driver and a phone call to the Hostel; he was warmly welcomed by the young woman who ran the show and advised that a good cheap dinner could be found at the open air night market, to which she gave him instructions.

Making his way down the broad avenue Ostragon wondered at the beauty of such a place, with cool, clean air, a beautiful night sky and general feeling of easiness.  He found his way to the market and reconnoitered a bit before settling on what appeared to be some good lamb from a street vendor.  This vendor tried pulling a very sharp price on Ostragon, which he really did not appreciate.  Luckily, some friendly Monghols were in the crowd, having their dinner and they interceded on behalf of Ostragon – price knocked down by 50% to something more reasonable;  Ostragon sat at the table of his new-found friends and they discussed in sign-language, laughter and cell-phone interpreters where they were from, what food they liked, what they liked to drink, whether they were married and had children, shared some very heavy duty cigarettes and finished the night off with some strong liquor which one of the two had gone away to find.

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