Also known as Turfan or Tulupan in Chinese, it is a remote desert city in the far west of China, one of the lowest places on earth, where rain never falls and summers are scorching hot. Turpan was once an important staging post on the Silk Road and its large oasis produces most of the best grapes in China. You can see the ancient Karez system of irrigation whereby the melted snow from the surrounding mountains is brought down to the town in underground channels, all dug by hand and stretching around some 3000km.

Many monuments bear witness to the importance of Turpan as a Silk Road city. Visit Jiaohe, a city founded in the 2nd century BC and abandoned in 14th century AD, standing on an impregnable plateau with a haunting silhouette. Travel to the Buddhist caves of Bezeklik, passing by Flaming Mountain, which depending how it catches the sun gives the impression of being on fire.

Unfortunately, all the statuary and even many of the murals in the Bezeklik Caves were removed in the 19th century by European archaeologist adventurers. The Astana cemetery dating from 200 AD contains several graves painted with murals and the mummified bodies of the occupants. The corpses avoided decomposition due to the extremely dry climate and now most of the Astana mummies are in Urumqi Museum.

80% of the town’s population are Uighurs, one of China’s minority peoples, Moslems, whose physical characteristics are more Central Asian than Han Chinese. Visit the bazaar, thronging with people, donkeys and carts with the smell of barbequed kebab in the air and in the evening sit under the grape trellises watching traditional Uighur dances and singing.