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TASHKENT, Uzbekistan — Albuquerque International Airport at 6 a.m. San Francisco nonstop to Beijing. Tiananmen Square. The Great Wall. Sleeper car to Xi'an, where the Qin Emperor buried himself with terra cotta warriors, and then the flight to Urumqi, capital of China's Far West.

And I am dragging.

Tourism, I tell myself, is a mechanism for seeing fascinating foreign people and places — in utter darkness.

Three days later, I recant.

Somehow, I have found myself in the Middle East and Xinjiang province, populated mostly by Muslim Uighurs, grabs me, smiling, in a powerful embrace.

• In the restaurant, under the grapevines, the kids — recent high school graduates, clean-cut, joyful — fill the dance floor. Same-sex couples go first, then boys and girls together, but not touching until the dance becomes communal, shortly before the music ends. It's Middle Eastern music — upbeat, except when they slow dance to the Russain Balalaika or accelerate wildly to —no kidding! — "Paloma Blanca." Did I mention the strobes? All this in Turpan, once an oasis on the fabled Silk Road.

• You approach almost all the mosques through leafy, tranquil gardens. The desert dweller's idea of heaven?

• The Sunday bazaar at Kashgar isn't what it was, says our guide. Yet they sell everything from sheep to nuts. Pretty soon, I quit shopping to watch people.

The Uighurs are ethnically Turkic, with roots in northern Mongolia. They are easily distinguishable from the Chinese — er, Han Chinese — because they are whiter, and their faces are broader.

After that, however, it gets complicated — some look Mediterranean, some Indian, some downright Midwestern. I find many of the women beautiful. I know that, because while most wear head scarfs, few cover their faces.

A good thing, too — navigating their motor scooters and motorcycles through traffic would be challenging in a chador.

• They are always smiling. Maybe that is because Beijing is throwing money at them, but it seems to spring from a deeper place.

In a quiet farm town outside Kashgar, we see a motorcycle-powered pickup bringing fruits and vegetables. Why? A farmer's wife explains they only have enough land for a rice crop and some farm animals. Then, she shares her life with us for 30 minutes — how her six kids are doing in school and at work and the sadness of the empty nest.

"My heart has gone out of the house," she says.

Our guide predicts the growing city soon will turn this village into a residential suburb.

• Speaking of real estate, we traveled out of Turpan to see the remains of an ancient city built of adobe. In Turpan itself, we traced underground channels built by ancients to funnel snow melt from the Tian Shan mountains to farmers and town dwellers below. Acequias, anyone?

• The young woman who knocks on my hotel room door in Turpan is Han Chinese, wears lots of bright red lipstick and offers services beyond the usual massages. But I am old and need my sleep.

• We eat too much, but the Uighur cuisine is hard to resist. Pilaf with spices and vegetables. Soups with noodles. Lamb, chicken, even fish kabobs. I loved the pumpkin dumplings and yogurt as dessert.

• We saw no blue skies in the industrial east, but here there is no industry, and auto traffic is not yet stop-and-go, so the Tian Shan peaks rise into blue, blue, blue.

• At the roadside, they sell a round little roll that looks very much like a bagel. Turns out to taste a bit like a bagel. Warm and chewy, it ranks as the best "nan" west of Urumqi.

"Hosh" is the Uighur word for "so long." It is time to get back on the road bound for fabulous Samarkand.