I doubted if few coming this way even knew, let alone appreciated, that, across an unremarkable strip of tarmac, lay an imaginary line. Longitude. Ninety degrees east. One quarter of the way around the world. Taken almost a year. Actually, I’d gone a bit further than that, starting a little to the west of the Greenwich Meridian.
I’d left Turpan earlier in the day, descending for a while. Further into the Depression. Brief respite from the harsh sun at a truck stop. Already in the thirties. Check of the altimeter. One hundred and fifty four feet below sea level. Further east the road climbs steadily, either side sandstone cliffs replacing the rough, rocky scrub of the Turpan Basin.
The occasional strip of green, sometimes close, sometimes distant. Small settlements. Mud brick buildings. Inaccessible from the carriageway, a stout barbed wire fence either side. Not even the smallest of gaps.
And then, eventually, a break in the fence. Across dusty, rough ground, a stall. Beneath the straw roof, tables stacked with melons, grapes drying on racks, a freezer filled with bottled water, a TV flickering in the background. Lunch. Then a return to the road. The earlier cliffs, imaginatively shaped by the wind, replaced by loose rocks, devoid of vegetation.
Later, beyond the ninetieth line of longitude, swirling dust clouds, whipping up debris as they crossed the carriageway. Further towards Shanshan, the night’s stop, thunder. Then huge globules of rain. Cold. But not the expected deluge. And not unpleasant.
