Download or read book Silk Route Adventure written by Claire Burges Watson and published by . This book was released on 2007 with total page 344 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Rebelling against the predictability of banking life, and with only her wits to equip her, Claire sets off on her own on an eighteen-month, 6,000-kilometre horseback adventure across Central Asia. Here, she offers an illustrated account of a seemingly impossible journey completed by her.
Download or read book Extremes Along the Silk Road written by Nick Middleton and published by John Murray Pubs Limited. This book was released on 2006-05-01 with total page 289 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Silk Road is the fabled route that cuts through one of the most extraordinary tracts of land on this planet. A vast region separating China from the Mediterranean, it rates as one of the least hospitable on Earth – a succession of hostile deserts and towering mountain ranges, a harsh terrain of howling winds, searing heat and blistering cold. No stranger to unforgiving territory, Nick Middleton follows in the footsteps of Alexander the Great and Marco Polo overland from China to Istanbul, surviving as they did the life-sapping Gobi desert, the icy passes of high altitude Tibet, and the great Steppes of Turkmenistan, and encounters those who eke out existences there today. Nick's great gift as an adventure writer is to weave together the personal experience of ridiculous endurance - from sleeping on steaming rocks in the middle of a sub-zero desert to eating the most dubiously-cooked local delicacies - with the bigger picture of our planet and its peoples.
Download or read book We re Riding on a Caravan written by Laurie Krebs and published by Barefoot Books. This book was released on 2007 with total page 36 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Join the caravan for an exciting year-long trek along China's ancient Silk Road. Following the rhyming, treasure-filled story are informational endnotes about the history of the Silk Road, the story of silk, important cities of China, and a full-spread map. Ages: 4-10 Colour illustrations
Download or read book The Silk Road written by Kathy Ceceri and published by Nomad Press. This book was released on 2011-01-01 with total page 178 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From Roman times until the Age of Exploration, the Silk Road carried goods and ideas across Central Asia between two major centers of civilization, the Mediterranean Sea and China. In The Silk Road: Explore the World’s Most Famous Trade Route, readers ages 9–12 will learn about the history, geography, culture, and people of the Silk Road region. Marco Polo was just one of many who set out on the Silk Road in search of wealth, power, or knowledge. These adventurers braved vast deserts, towering mountain peaks, warring tribes, and marauding bandits. Silk garments, wool rugs, and fine glass were the prizes for those who survived the trip. Activities using everyday materials bring the Silk Road to life. Young readers will see how ideas in math, science, religion, and art were spread by travelers along with the treasures they found. The Silk Road takes readers on an exciting, interactive adventure to a faraway place and celebrates its important role in human history and development. .
Download or read book Silk Road written by Colin Falconer and published by Atlantic Books. This book was released on 2012-05-01 with total page 529 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 1260 AD: Josseran Sarrazini is a Templar Knight, trained for war. But as the Christian garrisons in the Holy Land begin to fall to the Saracen, he must embark upon a mission of peace: to the golden palaces at Xanadu, to seek an alliance with Kubilai Khan, ruler of the greatest empire in history and commander of the invincible Mongol horde. Josseran's task is formidable. To ride the treacherous Silk Road to the edge of the known world. To cheat hunger, thirst, and death. And to forge a crucial allegiance with a people who do not honor his cause, or his God. Blazing with adventure, epic in scope, and utterly compulsive, Silk Road weaves a spellbinding story of war, honor, and desire onto the vast tapestry of the medieval East.
Download or read book Lands of Lost Borders written by Kate Harris and published by Knopf Canada. This book was released on 2018-01-30 with total page 299 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: NATIONAL BESTSELLER WINNER OF THE RBC TAYLOR PRIZE WINNER OF THE EDNA STAEBLER AWARD FOR CREATIVE NON-FICTION "Every day on a bike trip is like the one before--but it is also completely different, or perhaps you are different, woken up in new ways by the mile." As a teenager, Kate Harris realized that the career she most craved--that of a generalist explorer, equal parts swashbuckler and philosopher--had gone extinct. From her small-town home in Ontario, it seemed as if Marco Polo, Magellan and their like had long ago mapped the whole earth. So she vowed to become a scientist and go to Mars. To pass the time before she could launch into outer space, Kate set off by bicycle down a short section of the fabled Silk Road with her childhood friend Mel Yule, then settled down to study at Oxford and MIT. Eventually the truth dawned on her: an explorer, in any day and age, is by definition the kind of person who refuses to live between the lines. And Harris had soared most fully out of bounds right here on Earth, travelling a bygone trading route on her bicycle. So she quit the laboratory and hit the Silk Road again with Mel, this time determined to bike it from the beginning to end. Like Rebecca Solnit and Pico Iyer before her, Kate Harris offers a travel narrative at once exuberant and meditative, wry and rapturous. Weaving adventure and deep reflection with the history of science and exploration, Lands of Lost Borders explores the nature of limits and the wildness of a world that, like the self and like the stars, can never be fully mapped.
Download or read book A Single Pebble written by Bonnie Christensen and published by Macmillan. This book was released on 2013-10-15 with total page 45 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 9th century China, a little girl sends a small jade pebble to travel with her father along the Silk Road. The pebble passes from his hand all the way to the Republic of Venice, the end of the Silk Road, where a boy cherishes it and sees the value of this gift from a girl at the end of the road. A Neal Porter Book
Download or read book Night Train to Turkistan written by Stuart Stevens and published by Atlantic Monthly Press. This book was released on 1988 with total page 254 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The first account of travel in Chinese Turkistan, closed to foreigners since 1949, shows a world where bureaucratic hazards often loom larger than geographical ones. First serial to Esquire.
Download or read book Journeys on the Silk Road written by Joyce Morgan and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2012-08-22 with total page 349 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When a Chinese monk broke into a hidden cave in 1900, he uncovered one of the world’s great literary secrets: a time capsule from the ancient Silk Road. Inside, scrolls were piled from floor to ceiling, undisturbed for a thousand years. The gem within was the Diamond Sutra of AD 868. This key Buddhist teaching, made 500 years before Gutenberg inked his press, is the world’s oldest printed book. The Silk Road once linked China with the Mediterranean. It conveyed merchants, pilgrims and ideas. But its cultures and oases were swallowed by shifting sands. Central to the Silk Road’s rediscovery was a man named Aurel Stein, a Hungarian-born scholar and archaeologist employed by the British service. Undaunted by the vast Gobi Desert, Stein crossed thousands of desolate miles with his fox terrier Dash. Stein met the Chinese monk and secured the Diamond Sutra and much more. The scroll’s journey—by camel through arid desert, by boat to London’s curious scholars, by train to evade the bombs of World War II—merges an explorer’s adventures, political intrigue, and continued controversy. The Diamond Sutra has inspired Jack Kerouac and the Dalai Lama. Its journey has coincided with the growing appeal of Buddhism in the West. As the Gutenberg Age cedes to the Google Age, the survival of the Silk Road’s greatest treasure is testament to the endurance of the written word.
Download or read book Shadow of the Silk Road written by Colin Thubron and published by Harper Collins. This book was released on 2009-10-13 with total page 404 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Shadow of the Silk Road records a journey along the greatest land route on earth. Out of the heart of China into the mountains of Central Asia, across northern Afghanistan and the plains of Iran and into Kurdish Turkey, Colin Thubron covers some seven thousand miles in eight months. Making his way by local bus, truck, car, donkey cart and camel, he travels from the tomb of the Yellow Emperor, the mythic progenitor of the Chinese people, to the ancient port of Antioch—in perhaps the most difficult and ambitious journey he has undertaken in forty years of travel. The Silk Road is a huge network of arteries splitting and converging across the breadth of Asia. To travel it is to trace the passage not only of trade and armies but also of ideas, religions and inventions. But alongside this rich and astonishing past, Shadow of the Silk Road is also about Asia today: a continent of upheaval. One of the trademarks of Colin Thubron's travel writing is the beauty of his prose; another is his gift for talking to people and getting them to talk to him. Shadow of the Silk Road encounters Islamic countries in many forms. It is about changes in China, transformed since the Cultural Revolution. It is about false nationalisms and the world's discontented margins, where the true boundaries are not political borders but the frontiers of tribe, ethnicity, language and religion. It is a magnificent and important account of an ancient world in modern ferment.
Download or read book Chengli and the Silk Road Caravan written by Hildi Kang and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2011-09-08 with total page 186 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Chengli is an orphaned errand boy who lives in Chang'an China in 630 A.D. His mother has died from illness and his father is presumed dead after disappearing into the desert when Chengli was a baby. Now thirteen, Chengli feels ready for independence. He is drawn to the desert, beckoned by the howling of strange winds and the hope of learning something about his father--who he was and how he died. Chengli joins a caravan to travel down the merchant route known as the Silk Road, but it is a dangerous life, as his father knew. The desert is harsh, and there are many bandits--bandits interested in Chengli's caravan because a princess, her servants, and royal guards are traveling with them. But the desert is full of amazing places and life-changing experiences, as the feisty princess learns the meaning of friendship and Chengli learns the heroism of which he is capable.
Download or read book The Silk Roads written by Peter Frankopan and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2016-02-16 with total page 688 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER • Far more than a history of the Silk Roads, this book is truly a revelatory new history of the world, promising to destabilize notions of where we come from and where we are headed next. "A rare book that makes you question your assumptions about the world.” —The Wall Street Journal From the Middle East and its political instability to China and its economic rise, the vast region stretching eastward from the Balkans across the steppe and South Asia has been thrust into the global spotlight in recent years. Frankopan teaches us that to understand what is at stake for the cities and nations built on these intricate trade routes, we must first understand their astounding pasts. Frankopan realigns our understanding of the world, pointing us eastward. It was on the Silk Roads that East and West first encountered each other through trade and conquest, leading to the spread of ideas, cultures and religions. From the rise and fall of empires to the spread of Buddhism and the advent of Christianity and Islam, right up to the great wars of the twentieth century—this book shows how the fate of the West has always been inextricably linked to the East. Also available: The New Silk Roads, a timely exploration of the dramatic and profound changes our world is undergoing right now—as seen from the perspective of the rising powers of the East.
Download or read book Out of Istanbul written by Bernard Ollivier and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2019-06-18 with total page 339 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Acclaimed journalist Bernard Ollivier begins his epic journey on foot across the Silk Road. Upon retirement at the age of sixty-two, and grieving his deceased wife, renowned journalist Bernard Ollivier felt a sense of profound emptiness: What do I do now? While some see retirement as a chance to cash in their chips and settle into a comfy armchair, Ollivier still longed for more. Searching for inspiration, he strapped on his gear, donned his hat, and headed out the front door to hike the Way of St. James, a 1400-mile journey from Paris to Compostela, Spain. At the end of that road, with more questions than answers, he decided to spend the next few years hiking another of history’s great routes: the Silk Road. Out of Istanbul is Ollivier’s stunning account of the first part of that 7,200-mile journey. The longest and perhaps most mythical trade route of all time, the Silk Road is in fact a network of routes across Europe and Asia, some going back to prehistoric times. During the Middle Ages, the transcribed travelogue of one Silk Road explorer, Marco Polo, helped spread the fame of the Orient throughout Europe. Heading east out of Istanbul, Ollivier takes readers step by step across Anatolia and Kurdistan, bound for Tehran. Along the way, we meet a colorful array of real-life characters: Selim, the philosophical woodsman; old Behçet, elated to practice English after years of self-study; Krishna, manager of the Lora Pansiyon in Polonez, a village of Polish immigrants; the hospitable Kurdish women of Dogutepe, and many more. We accompany Ollivier as he explores bazaars, mosques, and caravansaries—true vestiges of the Silk Road itself—and through these encounters and experiences, gains insight into the complex political and social issues facing modern-day Turkey. Ollivier’s journey, far from bragging about some tremendous achievement, humbly takes the reader on a colossal adventure of human proportions, one in which walking itself, through a kind of alchemy, fosters friendships and fellowship.
Download or read book Winds of the Steppe written by Bernard Ollivier and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2020-11-17 with total page 312 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Bernard Ollivier pushes onward in his attempt to become the first person to walk the entire length of the Great Silk Road. “A gripping account. More than just a travel story—this is a quest for the Other.”—Alexis Liebaert, L’Événement Picking up where Walking to Samarkand left off, Winds of the Steppe continues the astonishing tale of journalist Bernard Ollivier’s 7,200-mile walk from Turkey to China along the Silk Road, the longest and most mythical trade route of all time. Taking readers from the snows of the Pamir Mountains to the backstreets of Kashgar—a Central Asian city that could be the setting for One Thousand and One Nights—to the Tian Shan Mountains to the endless Taklamakan and Gobi Deserts of China’s Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, Bernard Ollivier continues his epic foot journey along the Great Silk Road hoping to make his way to Han China and reach, at long last, the legendary city of Xi’an. After traveling through a region dotted with former Buddhist shrines, Ollivier finds himself craving the warm welcome of Islamic lands, where, regardless of their culture or nationality, travelers are often treated as esteemed guests. Beyond the occasional vestige of the old Silk Road, Ollivier comes face to face with sites of religious significance, China’s Great Wall, and of course thousands of everyday people along the way. As Ollivier tries to make sense of his journey and find connections between these people’s daily lives and the so-called “modern” world, he does so with a sense of humility that transforms his personal journey into a universal quest.
Download or read book The Silk Road written by Sven Anders Hedin and published by . This book was released on 1938 with total page 374 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book On the Noodle Road written by Jen Lin-Liu and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2013-07-25 with total page 358 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A food writer travels the Silk Road, immersing herself in a moveable feast of foods and cultures and discovering some surprising truths about commitment, independence, and love. As a newlywed traveling in Italy, Jen Lin-Liu was struck by culinary echoes of the delicacies she ate and cooked back in China, where she’d lived for more than a decade. Who really invented the noodle? she wondered, like many before her. But also: How had food and culture moved along the Silk Road, the ancient trade route linking Asia to Europe—and what could still be felt of those long-ago migrations? With her new husband’s blessing, she set out to discover the connections, both historical and personal, eating a path through western China and on into Central Asia, Iran, Turkey, and across the Mediterranean. The journey takes Lin-Liu into the private kitchens where the headscarves come off and women not only knead and simmer but also confess and confide. The thin rounds of dough stuffed with meat that are dumplings in Beijing evolve into manti in Turkey—their tiny size the measure of a bride’s worth—and end as tortellini in Italy. And as she stirs and samples, listening to the women talk about their lives and longings, Lin-Liu gains a new appreciation of her own marriage, learning to savor the sweetness of love freely chosen.
Download or read book A Carpet Ride to Khiva written by Chris Aslan and published by Icon Books Ltd. This book was released on 2010-07-01 with total page 333 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Silk Road conjures images of the exotic and the unknown. Most travellers simply pass along it. Brit Chris Alexander chose to live there. Ostensibly writing a guidebook, Alexander found life at the heart of the glittering madrassahs, mosques and minarets of the walled city of Khiva - a remote desert oasis in Uzbekistan - immensely alluring, and stayed. Immersing himself in the language and rich cultural traditions Alexander discovers a world torn between Marx and Mohammed - a place where veils and vodka, pork and polygamy freely mingle - against a backdrop of forgotten carpet designs, crumbling but magnificent Islamic architecture and scenes drawn straight from "The Arabian Nights". Accompanied by a large green parrot, a ginger cat and his adoptive Uzbek family, Alexander recounts his efforts to rediscover the lost art of traditional weaving and dyeing, and the process establishing a self-sufficient carpet workshop, employing local women and disabled people to train as apprentices. A Carpet Ride to Khiva sees Alexander being stripped naked at a former Soviet youth camp, crawling through silkworm droppings in an attempt to record their life-cycle, holed up in the British Museum discovering carpet designs dormant for half a millennia, tackling a carpet-thieving mayor, distinguishing natural dyes from sacks of opium in Northern Afghanistan, bluffing his way through an impromptu version of "My Heart Will Go On" for national Uzbek TV and seeking sanctuary as an anti-Western riot consumed the Kabul carpet bazaar. It is an unforgettable true travel story of a journey to the heart of the unknown and the unexpected friendship one man found there.
