Huo Yo Guai step across the steepes to cut the silk road (The saga of the Woden born Book 9)

1984 On a visit to friends in Australia, the narrator and Alice learn that the supposedly dead sister, Aikun of an old friend, Gul Baharl is alive. She is also in trouble and lost in the troubled Xinjiang Province in North West China. They go to find the girl. Posing as tourists visiting Kashgar in the south of this vast province they are joined by friends from Baluchistan who come across the newly opened border with Pakistan through the mountains. In this stange empty province they find Kazaks, Uighurs, Mongols as well as the multitude of Chinese Han colonists. Into this mix of ordianry folk go bandits, smugglers, PLA soldiers, secret police, spies, Russian agents exiled Chinese students and innocent western tourists. This all complicates the search for Aikun as they follow the silk road from the deserts of Kashgar to the mountain valleys beyond Yining. An exciting adventure full of action, humour, romance and history. Alice with her long ginger hair is described as a fire devil or djinn, a Huo Yo Guai. This book is part of the Saga of the Woden born series but a completely sepearate independent story. Approx 618 pages.