More can of course be said, especially in reference to the specifics of your question, but it is perhaps worth stressing that the Silk Road is an incredibly shaky construct. There was no single fixed route, and rarely did people travel from one 'end' to the other (but referring to distinct 'ends' is a misnomer in and of itself because there is no particular reason to consider Western Europe and eastern China to be the end points, to the exclusion of, say, India. Large caravans did exist, as I covered here, but they were the exception rather than the norm, and long-distance caravans were particularly rare, with most routes being a comparatively short hop – e.g. from northern India to Central Asia, from Central Asia to Western China, or from Central Asia to Iran. As such we aren't generally discussing the same caravans going across successive stretches of harsh terrain.

Of course, individuals might make such trips, and one famous example is Marco Polo – I summarised his route plan for getting from Iran to China in this answer, not much detail on transport admittedly but including the information he provided on the availability of food along the route.