I'm not sure if it was the thirtieth or the fourtieth huge pothole our car hit when our late model VW Passat started to hemmorage an enormous amount of oil.

Rick and I, along with a fellow traveler from Switzerland, had hired a car late Wednesday afternoon to take us to the Taklamakan Desert from Yarkand, yet another stop on the Silk Road.

We spent the day in Yarkand, wandering the streets of the old town and taking in the passing donkey carts, women shrouded in veils and vendors screaming out prices from the shaded table of a Uyghur restaurant. We had been told that Yarkand is what Kashgar was 10 years ago (or, "down-home Uyghur"), and Yarkand was exactly that. The day was going well, until we decided to go to the desert.

The trip seemed to start well -- speeding through villages of mud-brick houses and listening to Uygur music -- a mix between polka and pop in a language that's a mix between Turkish and Russian -- with the windows rolled down, enjoying the freakishly cool weather.

Within seconds of hitting the pothole our driver had pulled to the side of a narrow country road to figure out what had happened.

I opened the door, walked around the car and saw a spreading oil slick coming from under our car. I looked back to the offending pothole and saw a trail of oil leading to where we were idling.

Our Uyghur-speaking driver -- who spoke a little Chinese -- franically waved down a passing bus to use someone's cell phone when he realized his didn't get reception out in the middle of nowhere. He called his buddy and we settled in for a bit of a wait.

We could have broken down in a worse place. We we surrounded by green fields being tended by Uyghur farmers, the road, although in horrendous shape, was lined with poplars planted in a bid to stop the spread of the desert. Once in a while sheep and their hearders ambled past as we awkward foreigners tried to find a comfortable way to sit near the side of the road.

A boy -- no older than 10 years old -- appeared around the corner of the road, wielding a whip and a cow with a rope tied to its horns. Somehow this skinny kid was able to control a cow about 40 times his size. He stopped about 20 feet away from us to let his cow drink some water from the irrigation ditch nearby -- an probably to get a good look at us.

I pulled out my digital camera to take a picture and show him -- something I've learned is a sure-fire way to make a new friend. He was so excited that when his friend walked by he called to his friend to try it out. His friend ran back to the village, changed into a nice new shirt, and brought along a friend or six.

Soon I was taking photo after photo, and after each photo, all the kids would run screaming toward me pushing each other over trying to be the first to get a look at his or her mug.

The boys were the most aggresive, pushing over the two little girls who kept trying to get me to take their picture without the boys. It was impossible, because every time I tried, two or three of the boys would jump out in front of the camera.

Finally, our driver's friends arrived in an old VW Santana, and I had to say goodbye to my new friends, and hello to a hellish 4-hour journey back to Yarkand.

I should have known when they pulled out the rope they were going to use to tow the car that this would be a long trip. The rope was your average nylon bit used to tie furniture in the back of your pickup. Strong, but not exactly car towing material.

They tied the Passat to the Santana, gave it a push start, and we were ready to go, until that is, we hit a muddy spot (there's water in the desert?). Our driver decided to avoid the mud by taking a back street, which led us straight into a grain storage area.

We found away around that, and even managed (with a few rope breakings and close calls) to almost make it to the main road. But before we could do that, something annoying would have to happen.

A truck, with about 30 Uyghur men in the bed that had passed us half an hour earlier, was idling near something we couldn't see. (By then it was dark). Our driver stopped, got out to take a look, scratched his head in bemusement, and came back to the car to get his friends and figure out some sort of solution. Apparently someone thought it was a good idea to dig a ditch (about two feet deep and two feet across) in the middle of a road. Even the big blue truck wasn't sure what to do. (He eventually just rammed on the gas pedal, while people in the back of the truck went flying).

We, on the other hand, were in a low vehicle, pulling an even lower riding vehicle in back (and by the way, the rope had now broken about 20 times and was resembling a piece of dental floss). This, to say the least, was not an ideal situation.

I sat in the car being useless, while our drivers ran around uplling up weeds to throw into the ditch to act as a sort of traction. (I forgot to mention that the ditch was really muddy). Our driver maneuvered the Santana without the Passat attached. Then Rick, Alex (the Swiss man) our driver and his three friends miraculously pushed the Passat through the muddy ditch.

We were home free. Or so we thought. Little did we know that two more ditches, exactly the same, were waiting for us!

It took us four hours to get back to Yarkand, 3 and a half of which were spent messing with ropes and ditches. It had only taken 45 minutes to get to the spot where the car broke down.

As if our transportation woes could not get any worse, the three-hour trip to Kashgar became a five-hour trip when something happened to our bus. A few short miles from Kashgar we piled onto another bus, where Rick had to try to squeeze himself into the aisle between me and a Chinese girl who would not pull herself away from her cell phone.

Now we're back in Kashgar, hanging out until we get on a flight to Urumqi tomorrow night. From there Rick will go to Shanghai and I will meet friends in Xi'an.