Around the same time the last Neanders were packing it in out West, the Asians' ancestors were wandering the steppes East. Before 30000 BC they didn't have any domesticated beasts, and not even the Solutrean Toolkit; so it all went on foot. Most agree that whatever east/west traffic could be done, had to be done along the coasts; the vast Siberian interior should have been too cold and dangerous. Interbreeding with the Denisovans may have helped with the cold some.
Last May, I hear they're figuring out the geography. The earlier 30000s BC weren't a warm period but it also wasn't the full Ice Age. And they were a distance away from that Italian volcano. The main article is Feng Li, Nils Vanwezer, Nicole Boivin, Xing Gao, Florian Ott, Michael Petraglia, and Patrick Roberts: "Heading north".
They think that the Taklamakan then was more like the Aral Sea in historical time: dotted with landbound lakes. This would allow migration even without the cisterns, roads, and camels that made the corridor navigable in Neolithic times.
It's a theory. Doesn't seem a well-constrained theory.
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