On buses donkey carts trains jeeps & camels Colin Thubron traces the drifts of the first great trade route out of the heart of China into the mountains of Central Asia across northern Afghanistan & the plains of Iran into Kurdish Turkey Covering over 7000 miles in eight months Thurbron recounts extraordinary adventures
- a near-miss with a drunk-driver incarceration in a Chinese cell during the SARS epidemic undergoing root canal treatment without anaesthetic in Iran
- in inimitable prose Shadow of the Silk Road is about Asia today; a magnificent account of an ancient world in modern ferment