It was good to be in a part of the world where Marco Polo's recommendation still meant something, and I set off for Khotan without delay. In the pre-dawn the bus station in Kashgar was a scrum of donkey carts, beggars and passengers dwarfed by baggage.
Foreign travelers in Xinjiang's capital of Urumqi said at the time of the rioting that troops had been sent in to quell disturbances in Kashgar and two other cities, Hotan and Kuqa, and that an estimated 50 people were killed.
The Pakistan government was informed Monday that the Khunjerab Pass, the 13,120-foot-high road linking Pakistan with Kashgar, will not open as planned at the end of this month because of an avalanche.
In Xinjiang's government office in Beijing, an official said he did not know if reports that Kashgar was closed to foreigners were true.
Asian diplomats in Beijing said a dispute over a mosque in Xinjiang's remote western desert town of Kashgar sparked last week's unrest in which up to 50 were killed, according to unconfirmed reports.
Akto County is 25 miles south of the ancient bazaar city of Kashgar and less than 60 miles from the Soviet border.