Here are my favourite photos taken on a 12-day trip to Xinjiang, China with a group of photographers in May 2007. Xinjiang is in the north west part of China bordering 8 countries - Afganistan, Mongolia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, India, Pakistan and Russia. Our trip covered the southern part of this huge but sparsely populated territory which covers 1/6th the land area of China (1/4 of its border length) but has less than 2% of total China population.

The thing that strikes me most about this place is the huge diversity of the people that live here - the Uygurs, Tajiks, Han Chinese, and many others. Most of the people living in Xinjiang are Muslims and they are very friendly - all of us had a great time taking photos of people especially the kids. The route that we took was Urumqi-Kashgar-Tashkurgan-Kashgar-Hotan-Niya-Kuqa-Turpan-Urumqi which traced part of the Silk Road.

The hightlights of the trip for me are the Karakorum Highway/Pakistan border and the animal bazaar in Kashgar (an important crossroad on the Silk Road) which was like a step-back in time where every scene that I saw was like from the National Geographic magazine.

I hope you enjoy looking at the photos and look forward to your comments/feedbacks/critiques.

Foh Mang