Shadow of the Silk Road - Colin Thubron

The "Silk Road" must be the most romanticised route in the world. It conjures up pictures from all of our fairy tales, of castles and minarets and oriental folk in strange garb. For me personally it conjures a hard-paved road I once walked in the foothills of the Annapurnas - a strange cart-scale highway across an expanse of nothing that led from a hill-pass to an impoverished town that reeked of faded grandeur echoed only now in the ornate unpainted carved window shutters and in the gait of women when they straightened from bent work in the fields and the proud defiance of their menfolk who ... more

This book is one that I had longed to read for ages and finally managed to get hold of in the summer. I have an interest in History and reading about the history of the silk road sounded like it would be really interesting. Also my wife is Iranian and as the author would travel through Iran I thought it would be interesting to read (I have read a number of books of travels through Iran and always found them interesting). The book follows Mr Thubron as he travels from China along the historical Silk Road, he starts in China, goes to Krgyzstan, onto Uzbekistan, then Afghanistan, Iran and finally ... more