According to my taxi driver, foreigners particularly from New York come to Urumqi to do business - perhaps, using its modernity as an oasis of calm in a stark desert landscape surrounded by snow-capped mountains.

Out there is a trickle of rough and tumble backpacker culture that draws foreigners together trading books, insider travel advice and forming impromptu travel groups using English as the lingua franca. Some of them are seasoned foreigners with the leathery skin and stand-offishness to outsmart any slippery merchants or weather hazards along the road.

Stumbling upon one of the few hostels in town, the Xinjiang White Birth International Youth Hostel, after midnight on a dry, muggy May night, I was greeted by my travel partner who had already visited most places of North China alone.

They are highly independent types, some of whom carry Lonely Planet's China guide for any information about Xinjiang's modern-day Silk Road. These days, it's an unbeaten trail - a far cry from its fabled past as a connection on the northern route of the Silk Road, one that dates back to the glory days of the Tang Dynasty.