The Light of Kucha In this third part of travels on the Chinese Silk Road, Nishy Wijewardane reveals the remarkable Buddhist legacy of the Kingdom of Kucha, northern Taklamakan Desert, Xinjiang. Just a day before leaving Colombo for Central Asia, a book I ordered months earlier arrived through the post, much to my delight. It contained rare photographs of extraordinarily beautiful 3-5th C AD Buddhist cave murals from a remote corner of China's vast Xinjiang Autonomous Region. The exhilarating photographs depicted exquisite renditions of the Jataka Tales in colours alien to murals in Sri Lanka. As the pages turned, my...