Vacation is largely about escape, escape from the predictability of workaday life, escape from the claustrophobia of city life. But the middle of nowhere gets old quick. What you want is a trip through nowhere. When your path dwindles to a tiny speck on the horizon, and you drift through spectacular desolation, the mind is free to flutter about at first, and finally to soar. Witness the iconic movie theme of driving through Death Valley. Better yet, think Huck Finn on his raft. Now that’s drifting, an ultimate escape from old self to new you.

The Mississippi is decidedly more inconvenient to pilot a raft on than it was a century and a half ago, but naturally China offers its own unique version of the experience.

To speak of the Tengger Desert as China’s fourth largest, or engage in other statistical frippery, is like trying to hold a tempest in a teacup. Brought to its edge, travelers invariably conjure the stock of clichés with which we face the marvelous: a sea of sand, hell on earth, et.al.

They can’t see the smattering of freshwater lakes that make this desert far more forgiving to its Hui inhabitants than big brother Gobi to the North. I can. Turning my back to the emptiness, I take in an expansive orchard, and even more refreshingly, the Yellow River, the watery womb of Chinese civilization, flowing past it.

I’m outside Shapotou, on the fringes of the Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region. The National Tourism Board will tell you about the grottoes and other attractions that await you here, but it’s truly nowhere. If you want solitary desert splendor, go to Mongolia. If you want Muslim-flavored fun and hospitality, go to Xinjiang. The prospect of Shapotou, approached from afar in a railway car, undulating in the heat waves, is one of loneliness and neglect, made even more lonely-looking by the desolate foothills behind it, and even more neglected by the single road which passes it at a safe distance. Not a place to get stuck in, but a good place to pass through. Drift through, ideally.

My Chinese companions want to pick pears in the orchard, while I’m in a hurry to slow things down on the river. But plucking fruit from the trees stirs something deep in the Chinese agrarian soul, so I hie to the river bank to examine our craft, my nomadic blood longing to be off someplace new.

They say we’ve lost more secrets to boat-making than we currently know. This specimen of river craft, however, looks as though it had been thrown together by a pack of adventurous but intellectually-challenged youth with a penchant for slaughtering sheep. A few dozen oily bladders, sealed off and strung together with awkward, ancient ingenuity, make a bobbly bed for some sturdy bamboo covering. The thing might have been built for Marco Polo, by the looks of it. We are on the Silk Road, after all. Our steersman has the cheerfully vacant look of a man so used to deprivation that he sees his inevitable death as a blessed release. Not to worry, though. Our stretch of the Yellow River seems almost stationary, in no hurry to progress eastward, where it will be drawn and dissipated by a million hands to feed a billion mouths. Besides, in the event of capsize, my fruit-gorged friends should succumb to cramps and make for serviceable flotsam long before I grow too tired to tread water.

We embark and push off, but it will be some time before I have the drifty peace I dreamed of. My raft-mates are working stiffs on vacation; their natural ebullience keeps them chatting and seed-chewing for leagues. They often take pity on my silent state and practice their English by pointing out the obvious: it is very peace, there is many sand. They’re chipper, but only human. After two hours of unbroken sand gazing and sunshine, they’re spread about the raft lazily, probably thinking about lunch.

To reward our silence, the river takes us through a spectacular canyon. Its cliffs are often close enough to reach out and touch, the multi-hued sediment of countless eons stacked up like so many dirt pancakes. The only sounds come from the water slurping our craft along, and the labored wheezing of our coxswain, whose hand on the tiller appears easily as time-worn as the canyon walls.

Back out into open country, and dunes rippling out to infinity. Blurry movement catches the eye, but it’s impossible to gauge the distance. The bobbing motion triggers recognition – it’s a camel caravan. I’m almost embarrassed at how Marco Polo I feel, but now comes the true sensation of being in ultra-slow transit, with nowhere to go and no hurry in getting there.

Soon my electronically-addled gray matter knows the blissful balm of true reverie. Memories of past highs and lows merge into unimportance, fears and hopes for the future diminish to the pale speculations they are. A low, hollow tone comes to my attention. It gets louder and seems to come from everywhere. It’s Gabriel’s trumpet; it’s Buddha’s gong; it’s…the Golden Bell of resonant sands, more mountain than dune. The punters who trudge to the top and slide down on boards are responsible for the cosmic ringing. Darn, and I thought I had achieved enlightenment.