Drawn by the romance of the far west, Liu Qi ventures into the vast desert in Ningxia where she makes friends with a camel before heading south on other adventures near the Silk Road.

Stretches and stretches of sand dunes extending as far as eye can see, a train of camels trudging against the skyline, turbaned trekkers braving the searing heat and dust ... I was so haunted by this vision that I realized it was time to go west.

I flipped a coin and decided on the Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region, land of the little-explored Western Xia State (1038-1227), exotic Chinese Muslim culture, and of course, the desert where kingdoms rose and fell and ruins are buried.

The minute I stepped out of the Yinchuan airport (a two-and-a-half-hour flight from Shanghai), I found a somewhat cliched capital city: well-constructed roads and modern buildings. My disappointment at the mundane, however, was soon be replaced by pleasure with the novelty of back streets navigated by my taxi driver.

The various mosques, the unique dress of the Hui minority people, the all-pervasive small of mutton - all reminded me that I had stepped out of my Shanghai routines and was right in the middle of my dream of the wild, wild west.