The Tarim Basin is a very large, very dry bowl, and Kuqa sits on its northern rim where the Tian Shan drops its meltwater onto the plain. Subash, about eighteen kilometres north of town, is what remains of a Buddhist monastery that once straddled the Kuqa river, with one half of the complex on each bank. The river is a gravel-and-mud braid for most of the year, and the ruins around it are the colour of the ground: mud-brick stupas, walls and cell blocks that have been eroded into soft shapes by centuries of wind and the occasional flood.
In its day this was a big deal. Kucha, as the old kingdom was called, was one of the great oases of the northern Silk Road, a place where Indian, Iranian and Chinese influences met, and where monks translated sutras and musicians developed a style that later reached the courts of Tang China. The Chinese pilgrim Xuanzang passed through in the seventh century and wrote about the monasteries here, including the pair on opposite banks of the river. Standing among the foundations you can read that history in the layout without needing a plaque to tell you.
The riding is the kind that suits this part of Xinjiang. The roads out of Kuqa are wide and straight, bordered by poplar windbreaks and cotton or jujube fields, then they climb gently toward bare brown foothills. The corners are few, the horizons long, and the main enemy is the sun and the wind that can blow dust across the carriageway in the afternoon. Start early. The light on the hills is best in the first hours, and it gets properly hot by midday in summer.
The same ride links Subash with the Kizil cave-temples and the Kizilgaha beacon tower, which is a good way to see how the Buddhist and military sides of the Silk Road shared the same corridor. Kuqa itself has the fuel, the food and the beds, and since it is a town of nearly seventy thousand people you will not struggle to find a meal. Grilled lamb, flatbread baked in a tandoor-style oven and fresh melon are the sensible choices on this side of the country. Carry water to the ruins, because there is very little shade out there and nowhere to buy a bottle once you leave the road.
Allow time to walk rather than ride the last bit. The site rewards slow looking, and the silence, broken only by wind and the occasional bird, is part of why it is worth the detour.