Shadow of The Silk Road

By Colin Thubron

There was never one Silk Road - but several. The route chosen by Colin Thubron passes through China, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Afghanistan, Iran and Turkey, taking in the most sterile desert on earth (the Taklamakan) and the strife-torn mountain valleys of today's conflicts, as he travels from the tomb of the Yellow Emperor (the mythic progenitor of the Chinese people) to the ancient port of Antioch, by local bus, truck, car - occasionally Landrover, horse or camel. He covers 7,000 miles in 8 months, and confesses that it is the most difficult, complex and ambitious journey he has undertaken in 40 years of travel. The Silk Road is a huge network of arteries and veins, splitting and converging across the breadth of Asia. Chinese silk has turned up in the hair of a 10th-century-BC Egyptian mummy; equally, the tartan plaids of 3000-year-old mummies in the Chinese desert echo those of early Celts. To be travelling the Silk Road, writes Colin Thubron, is to be travelling the history of the world: tracing the passage not just of trade and armies, but of ideas, religions and inventions. Yet - despite the lure of the history - this book is as much about Asia today.

Its themes include different Islams (oppressed in China; fervent in Afghanistan and Iran; cautiously monitored in Uzbekistan); contrast (no cities could be more different than ancient Samarkand and modern Teheran); and the way that today's borders are meaningless because the true boundaries are made by tribe, ethnicity, language and religion. "Shadow of the Silk Road" is a brilliant account of an ancient world in modern ferment.

Ghost Riders: Travels with American Nomads

By Richard Grant

Ghost Riders is Grant's justification and account of his many years on the road, as well as an attempt to analyse the nomadic impulse. It combines the history of the conquistadors, the native Americans and the white European settlers with stories of Grant's encounters with fellow drifters, hobos, rodeo-riders, cave-dwellers, tramps, buckskinners, "Geritol Gypsies" and almost every other kind of American borderline psychotic and itinerant, although he doesn't touch "golf professionals who spend their lives on tour", corporate executives or Keanu Reeves (who apparently lives out of his on-set trailers). Grant keeps it pure, and "the pure nomad", he notes, "is the poor nomad".

This is all very - very - interesting, but what will really sell the book are Grant's passing, throw-away descriptions of all-night truckstops on the outskirts of Albuquerque, or stopping off for some smokes in Las Cruces. He has tapped into a common, if not quite a universal fantasy, and he knows it: "As I write this, a street urchin in Kathmandu, a merchant banker in Bonn and a failed pimp in Caracas are all dreaming about driving across America in a pair of Levi's and a fast car. A factory girl in Liverpool, gutting chickens on a conveyor belt, is dreaming about Thelma and Louise." [read more]

The Explorer's Eye

By Fergus Fleming and

Annabel Merullo

As a boy Michael Palin was enthralled by tales of the great explorers — set upon by cannibals or tortured by frostbite. So he just had to follow in their footsteps.

It was not until I was 12 OR 13 that I finally gave up hope of becoming an explorer. Since about the age of 8, I had been aware of a strong, and at times almost desperate, need to see parts of the world before anyone else did. I’ve never been quite sure where this urge came from, but returning to these classic accounts from the golden age of exploration reminds me. I was absolutely entranced by the tales the great explorers told. The frostbite, the gangrene, the cannibalism, the curses, the naked fear and total exhaustion, the whole panoply of horrors seemed so much more attractive than playing French cricket and drinking Horlicks.

My imagination fed greedily on accounts of appalling suffering and insane bravery, such as Captain Scott’s doomed but grippingly documented South Pole expedition, Livingstone’s defiance of death and disease to reach the towering waters of the Victoria Falls, Mallory and Irvine vanishing into a cloud 800ft from the top of Everest, never to be seen again.

On May 27, 1953, Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay struggled to the top of Everest, the first people to do so. It seemed literally, the high peak of the Golden Age of exploration. After Everest most of the iconic extremes had been conquered. But it was not only that. The Everest expedition, well-financed, well-equipped and media-conscious, seemed to suggest that we had got the measure of the difficult and dangerous. Something of the mystique of exploration had gone. Technology was becoming more sophisticated, reducing both human risk and human achievement. There were great challenges left, but few of them captured the public imagination in the same way as the search for the source of the Nile or the crossing of Australia. Four years after Hillary and Tenzing’s triumph, Vivian Fuchs led the first crossing of Antarctica, but as Fergus Fleming writes: “It seemed that victory had become a non-event . . . nobody died, everything went more or less according to plan.” At the time of writing Ranulph Fiennes is doing his best to keep the traditions of exploring alive and well, setting himself ever-harder targets and ever-more punishing challenges. But the achievement of “being the First” is no longer as evocative and resounding as it once was. The fact remains that, as I had reluctantly to admit, before I was even out of short trousers, most of the world had been explored. [read more]

Exerpt from The Times

Venice: Tales of a City

by Michelle Lovric

Elusive and fantastical, Venice is a many-layered confection of history. The writers here have captured what is most important to them in pieces ranging from the city's foundation up to the present time. The voices, entirely diverse, are both international and native: here we meet Hans Christian Andersen, Paolo Barbaro, Bernard Berenson, Mary Braddon, Casanova, Chekov, Thomas Coryate, Gabriele D'Annunzio, John Evelyn, Hans Habe, Hermann Melville, Claude Monet, Margaret Oliphant, Ezra Pound, Rainer Maria Rilke, Francesco Sansovino, Frances Trollope and Elio Zorzi. Variously a City of the Soul, The Watery City, The Merchant City, City Afloat, City at Play, The Cruel City, City of Courtesans, City of Arts, City of Flavours, The Haunted City and City of the Future, Venice is captured here in all her moods. This is a beguiling collection of prose and poetry about the magical, incomparable city of Venice.

Around The World in 80 Treasures

By Dan Cruickshank

Dan Cruickshank's quest is to tell the story of civilisation through the greatest of man's achievements. It will also be the story of his travels, and who and what he meets along the way.
Whether standing before the solemn heads of Easter Island, investigating the mysterious Nazca lines in Peru or the magnificent temple of Borobodur in Java, Dan is never less than fascinating about the origins, construction, mysteries and vicissitudes of each of these monuments to the great civilisations of the world. Do they live up to expectation? Have they been left in ruin, or over-restored?

Dan's diary, written at the end of each day, records his most intimate thoughts and feelings, the people he has met, the ups and downs of the journey, perils, joys, and the ongoing relationships formed on the road. AROUND THE WORLD IN 80 TREASURES is a riveting story of adventure and the pursuit of knowledge. CONTENTS:The Americas Include - Amazonian Tribal Headdress, Mesa Verde in Mexico, The Colt 45, Monticello, Statue of Liberty, Seagram Building, Totem Poles. The Far East Includes - Kakadu Rock Paintings, Cliffside Graves, Angkor Wat in Cambodia, Himeji Castle in Japan. The Indian Subcontinent Includes - Ellora/ajanta Paintings, Palace of Jaipur. The Middle East Includes - Minaret of Jam and Bactrian Gold in Afghanistan, Samarkand, Karnak, Damascus Souq, Petra, Temple Mount. Africa Includes - Ark of The Covenant in Ethiopia, Lalibela, Dogon Mask, Leptis Magna in Libya. Western Europe Includes - Palech Icon, Tsarkoye Selo Amber Room, The Parthenon, Michelangelo's David, Alhambra in Spain and Chartres Cathedral.

With200 colour illustrations the book accompanies a 10 part x 1 hour prime time series on BBC2 to be screened in early 2005. The treasures chosen represent man's greatest achievements, and range from Machu Picchu and Easter Island in the Americas to the Samurai sword, the Great Wall of China, the Spice warehouses in Kochi, India, Michelangelo's David and the Moscow Underground. The journey is as important as Dan's knowledgeable observations on the treasures - his diary records the ups and downs of each day's travel, the people he meets, the expectations and the realities.

The Ocean Railway

By Stephen Fox

The great transatlantic steamship lines revolutionized Anglo-American commerce and travel. In a wave of British and American entrepreneurial zeal, the ploddingly slow, ugly and uncomfortable vessels of the early 19th century were transformed into vast, swift, graceful and often luxurious ocean-going liners. Steamships became emblems of an age, of a Victorian audacity of spirit - cathedrals to man's harnessing of new technology. Through the innovations and designs of key engineers and shipping magnates - Samuel Cunard (later Sir), Isambard Kingdom Brunel and Edward Knights Collins - "the largest moveable objects in human history" were created, and under turbine propulsion transatlantic crossing times shrank from six weeks to six days. To the wealthy, the great steamships would come to represent travel with style and glamour, but to most they offered cheap fast passage out of Europe to the New World and new opportunities. At their peak, the steamships would deliver one million new Americans each year, transforming the world's oceans from barriers into highways.

In this book, Stephen Fox also chronicles the tragedies that marked the evolution of the ocean liner, including, the sinking, in 1852, of Edward Knight Collins' steamship the Arctic, with the loss of 322 lives including Collins' wife and daughter, alongside the early 20th century losses of the Lusitania and the Titanic. Stephen Fox recreates the experience of transatlantic passage through contemporary records, diaries and writings (including those of Dickens and Emerson), and examines the societies created on the vast floating cities with cultures and conditions of their own.