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Usually, I return from travel refreshed, having escaped routine for novelty. It's almost a month, though, since my Silk Road adventure, and, well, it rattled me.

I'm assaulted by questions and - darn it - I cannot stop thinking.

Example: Oasis-hopping through Central Asia, I listened as the guides reinforced what I had read - its history is war: tribal, imperial and religious war. In China, I bumped into a traveler fresh from Mongolia who wondered aloud if history is nothing but the story of successive megalomaniacs.

I disagreed then, but now I wonder. Is war our natural state and peace just the timeout that proves the rule?

Everything is relative, as I am reminded whenever I abandon my tasteless skim milk for the thrill of 2 percent. At home I watch market capitalism corrode democracy and family values, but the Silk Road offered a different perspective.

A Moslem Uighur entrepreneur in Xinjiang, China, warned us we would find "rigidity" across the border in Kyrgyzstan. They don't "understand the market," he said. What understatement!

High in Kyrgyzstan's Tian Shan Mountains, the vistas were inspiring, but our tour hit its low point. They assigned the wrong vehicle for bumping along terrible roads. The ethnic Russian guide was inflexible, the Kyrgyz guide little better. And on the shores of Issyk Kul, an immense, lovely mountain lake, we were booked into a Soviet-era hotel - no choices, and the hotel made them. Da!

Capitalism, my apologies.

Change is afoot. In a Kyrgyz airport, a bearded elder wearing the national hat - think Alpine Swiss yodeler - sits near me.

"Salaam aleikum," he says.

"Aleikum salaam."

Later, his family gathers around - wife, adult children and grandchildren, including a bright youngster.

Isken, who is 11, asks my name.

"Arthur, I say, smiling, "as in King Arthur."

He shoots back, "I'm royal, too. Isken, like Alexander of Macedonia."

His older sister works in marketing. The family has relatives in Pennsylvania. Isken, who speaks Kyrgyz, Russian and Turkish, as well as English, isn't sure what he'll do when he grows up - maybe business.

Not a terrible choice, I think.

Radical Islam is scary, and so I am alert in Xinjiang, China's Muslim province, where Arabic script, ancient mosques, mausoleums, minarets and madrassas paint a Middle Eastern picture. Everybody is relaxed, though - friendly, even warm.

One Muslim Uighur businessman talks religion. He observes Ramadan and other holidays. He tries to be "good." Prayer five times a day? That would be so inconvenient. Sounds like some Reform Jews I know.

A young woman in his employ wakes to pray at 5 a.m. Her ambition is to study hotel management in Switzerland.

This Islam is nonthreatening, but is it universal? Beijing warns the 2008 Olympics there will be targeted by terrorists from this very place.

Speaking neither Uighur nor Chinese, I'm in no position to convert my impressions into conclusions. However, I'm skeptical of China's story, too. China's rulers used conspiracies, real and imagined, to amass imperial power long before Dick Cheney learned how.

I just cannot know.

And there's a deeper problem - certainty. Take those Kyrgyz Mountains. Because I looked it up, I can tell you they dwarf the Rockies. However, that's all. I got a D in geology. There's the rub. I brought myself to the Silk Road, with all my limitations. Which leaves me wondering how I can know anything for sure.