Video | How my family Silk Road trip ended in a nightmare of security and a stay in hospital in Kashgar

Xinjiang Kashgar First People’s Hospital was not on the itinerary for our family tour of the Silk Road in China, which included the famed Mogao Caves, outposts of the Great Wall, the Singing Sand Mountains, and the rainbow-coloured hills of Zhangye Danxia Geopark.

But less than 24 hours after arriving in Kashgar – China’s westernmost city and its last outpost on the Silk Road – we were in an emergency room waiting for an operation to remove a blood clot from my father’s brain.

In retrospect, it may not have been the best time to be travelling in the Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region – even without the trip revolving around a Kashgar hospital. It was 12 days before China’s National Day on October 1, and security was tightening in the Muslim-majority area labelled “restive” by foreign media and populated by “separatist” Uygurs, according to the central government in Beijing.

A few days earlier, my 80-year-old father had seemed exhausted – walking more slowly and napping a lot more on the tour bus. Now, he could not even walk or stand on his own.

My mother worried it was a stroke, but his speech was not slurred and he was mentally alert. After arriving in Kashgar on a flight from Urumqi, the region’s capital, we took him for a CAT scan, which revealed the blood clot. We called the travel insurance company in Quebec, Canada, to convince them that he needed to be flown to Beijing, Shanghai or Hong Kong for the procedure. The company insisted it was too dangerous for him to fly so we had no choice; the operation had to be done in Kashgar. By this time it was almost midnight.

Our Uygur tour guide translated the explanation of the procedure given by the surgeon, who spoke only Uygur but helpfully drew a diagram showing where holes would be drilled into my father’s skull to drain the clot.