If you’ve ever flown to Europe from China, and happened to look out the window as you soared over the western edge of the country, you’ll likely have seen vast expanses of blindingly white, snow-capped ridges. Maybe you even took a picture or two. Chances are it was the Pamir Mountain Range, the "Roof of the World", home to some of the highest mountains on Earth. Incredibly, scattered throughout this forbidding network of peaks and massifs, are isolated pockets of civilization. Datong is one such place.

It is not so easy to reach. The seven-hour flight from Beijing to the Silk Road oasis of Kashgar is the most painless part of the journey. From there, it’s a seven-hour drive to Tashkurgan via the world’s highest paved international road, the Karakoram Highway. The final leg is a grueling six-hour tumble dryer ride through sweeping sandstone valleys and ancient river beds. 

The reward for your troubles is an explosion of pink: sprawling apricot trees laden with cotton-candy blossoms, forming flowery canopies over the adobe bungalows of the local Tajiks. In the crisp green fields, gnarled men with skin like distressed leather sow wheat using antique plows, while their wives and daughters stitch floral embroidery under the dappled shade of blooming apricot trees. 

Although Tajik men mostly wear black, ladies’ outfits burst with color. However, while a lady’s skull cap, headscarf, waistband and dress may all be of different colors, a red hat means she’s a newlywed, while a blue one means she’s in mourning. Good to know, lest you make a faux pas.

The food here can be a bit different to what you’re used to. Breakfast is milk tea with salt, not sugar, and naan bread. Instead of hummus, Tajiks dip naan in bot, a mixture of yak butter and starch fried in oil. Balls of fried dough called arzek are also firm favorites – they hark back to the Tajiks’ nomadic way of life, and the need for portable food that doesn’t spoil easily. Important guests must be served pilaf rice, and if a host doesn’t have the lamb to go in it, he will borrow his neighbor’s goat – tradition demands it.

Life in Datong is undeniably slow, but perhaps it is a good thing. For now at least, the village still looks as it might have during the Silk Road, all those centuries ago.