Shadow of the Silk Road
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To travel the Silk Road, the greatest land route on earth, is to trace the passage not only of trade and armies but also of ideas, religions, and inventions. Making his way by local bus, truck, car, donkey cart, and camel, Colin Thubron covered some seven thousand miles in eight months—out of the heart of China into the mountains of Central Asia, across northern Afghanistan and the plains of Iran into Kurdish Turkey—and explored an ancient world in modern ferment. The New York Times Book Review - Lorraine Adams With its elegiac tone, Shadow of the Silk Road is moving in a way that s rare in travel literature, sidestepping nostalgia even as it notes its pull. Thubron goes to places most other sojourners can t—because they re not so much geographic locations as states of mind, formed from the lifelong accretion of intriguing facts, mistaken hopes, mysteries. Here, on civilization s oldest and longest road, which isn t quite a road, he has found his way into that kingdom and brought it into focus for us.
Author's note xiiiDawn 1The Capital 7Mantra 46The Last Gate Under Heaven 68The Southern Road 96Kashgar 138The Mountain Passage 154To Samarkand 184Over the Oxus 219Mourning 262The Mongol Peace 294To Antioch 333Timeline 346Index 350
