Download or read book Walking to Samarkand written by Bernard Ollivier and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2020-04-14 with total page 341 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Acclaimed journalist Bernard Ollivier continues his epic journey across Persia and Central Asia as he walks the length of the Great Silk Road. Walking to Samarkand is journalist Bernard Ollivier’s stunning account of the second leg of his 7,200-mile walk from Istanbul, Turkey, to Xi’an, China, along the Silk Road--the longest and perhaps most mythical trade route of all time. Picking up where Out of Istanbul left off, Ollivier heads out of the Middle East and into Central Asia, grappling not only with his own will to continue but with new, unforeseen dangers. After crossing the final mountain passes of Turkish Kurdistan, Ollivier sets foot in Iran, keen on locating vestiges of the silk trade as he passes through Persia’s modern cities and traditional villages, including Tabriz, Tehran, Nishapur, and the holy city of Mashhad. Beyond urban areas lie deserts: first Iran’s Great Salt Desert, then Turkmenistan’s forbidding Karakum, whose relentless sun, snakes, and scorpions pose continuous challenges to Ollivier’s goal of reaching Uzbekistan. Setting his own fears aside, he travels on, wonderstruck at every turn, borne by a childhood dream: to see for himself the golden domes and turquoise skies of Samarkand, one of Central Asia’s most ancient cities. But what Ollivier enjoys most are the people along the way: Askar, the hospitable gardener; the pilgrims of Mashhad; and his knights in shining armor, Mehdi and Monir. For, despite setting out alone, he comes to find that walking itself—through a kind of alchemy—surrounds him with friends and fosters fellowship. From the authoritarian mullahs of revolutionary Iran to the warm welcome of everyday Iranians—custodians of age-old, cordial Persian culture; from the stark realities of former Soviet republics to the region’s legendary bazaars—veritable feasts for the senses—readers discover, through the eyes of a veteran journalist, the rich history and contemporary culture of these amazing lands.
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 Summary of Bernard Ollivier s Walking to Samarkand written by Everest Media, and published by Everest Media LLC. This book was released on 2022-05-15T22:59:00Z with total page 53 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Please note: This is a companion version & not the original book. Sample Book Insights: #1 I had been on three flights before boarding the bus to Erzurum: Paris–Istanbul, Istanbul–Ankara, and finally Ankara–Erzurum. I was comfortably strapped in my seat when I looked down and watched as the landscapes, cities, and villages raced by. I wanted to get out and walk. #2 I set out from Istanbul on the first leg of this journey in April 1999. I was excited and happy to be walking the world, and I had high expectations for the trip. But my joyful mood was dampened when I was attacked by Kangals and people, and when I was sick and had to be evacuated. #3 I’m setting out in May, so most of my journey will take place during the summer. I’ll have to cross three of Central Asia’s hottest deserts, each one inhabited by friendly little critters like cobras, scorpions, and tarantulas. #4 I was determined to enjoy the journey, no matter what. I was getting on in years, and I had no idea if my health would hold up as it had in the past. I was afraid of solitude, but I wanted to experience it.
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 312 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 Uzbekistan written by and published by Odyssey Publications. This book was released on 2008 with total page 380 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Travel & holiday.
Download or read book The Golden Journey to Samarkand written by James Elroy Flecker and published by . This book was released on 1913 with total page 88 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Walking to Vermont written by Christopher S. Wren and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2007-11-01 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A distinguished former foreign correspondent embraces retirement by setting out alone on foot for nearly four hundred miles, and explores a side of America nearly as exotic as the locales from which he once filed. Traveling with an unwieldy pack and a keen curiosity, Christopher Wren bids farewell to the New York Times newsroom in midtown Manhattan and saunters up Broadway, through Harlem, the Bronx, and the affluent New York suburbs of Westchester and Putnam Counties. As his trek takes him into the Housatonic River Valley of Connecticut, the Berkshires of Massachusetts, the Green Mountains of Vermont, and along a bucolic riverbank in New Hampshire, the strenuous challenges become as much emotional as physical. Wren loses his way in a suburban thicket of million-dollar mansions, dodges speeding motorists, seeks serenity at a convent, shivers through a rainy night among Shaker ruins, camps in a stranger's backyard, panhandles cookies and water from a good samaritan, absorbs the lore of the Appalachian and Long Trails, sweats up and down mountains, and lands in a hospital emergency room. Struggling under the weight of a fifty-pound pack, he gripes, "We might grow less addicted to stuff if everything we bought had to be carried on our backs." He hangs out with fellow wanderers named Old Rabbit, Flash, Gatorman, Stray Dog, and Buzzard, and learns gratitude from the anonymous charity of trail angels. His rite of passage into retirement, with its heat and dust and blisters galore, evokes vivid reminiscences of earlier risks taken, sometimes at gunpoint, during his years spent reporting from Russia, China, the Middle East, Southeast Asia, South America, and Africa. He loses track of time, waking with the sun, stopping to eat when hunger gnaws, and camping under starry skies that transform the nights of solitude. For all the self-inflicted hardship, he reports, "In fact, I felt pretty good." Wren has woven an intensely personal story that is candid and often downright hilarious. As Vermont turns from a destination into a state of mind, he concludes, "I had stumbled upon the secret of how utterly irrelevant chronological age is." This book, from the author of the acclaimed bestseller The Cat Who Covered the World, will delight not just hikers, walkers, and other lovers of the outdoors, but also anyone who contemplates retirement, wonders about foreign correspondents, or relishes a lively, off-beat adventure, even when it unfolds close to home.
Download or read book Eastern Approaches written by Fitzroy MaClean and published by Penguin UK. This book was released on 2015-05-07 with total page 379 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Fitztroy Maclean was one of the real-life inspirations for super-spy James Bond. After adventures in Soviet Russia before the war, Maclean fought with the SAS in North Africa in 1942. There he specialised in hair-raising commando raids behind enemy lines, including the daring and outrageous kidnapping of the German Consul in Axis-controlled Iraq. Maclean's extraordinary adventures in the Western Desert and later fighting alongside Tito's partisans in Yugoslavia are blistering reading and show what it took to be a British hero who broke the mould . . .
Download or read book Red Sands written by Caroline Eden and published by Hardie Grant Publishing. This book was released on 2020-11-12 with total page 526 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Winner of the André Simon Food Book Award 2020 Fortnum & Mason’s Awards, shortlisted in ‘Food Book’ category (2021) "Caroline Eden is an extraordinarily creative and gifted writer. Red Sands captures the sights, tastes and feel of Central Asia so well that when reading this book I was sometimes convinced I was there in person. A wonderful book from start to finish." Peter Frankopan, author of The Silk Roads "Caroline Eden, whose book Black Sea was showered with awards, is on the road again, this time travelling through the heart of Asia. It’s not your usual cookbook, it’s more a travel book with recipes, the recipes acting as postcards which she sends as she meets new characters, most of them involved with food... Eden travels quietly and lets you in on every encounter and every bite. A moving... as well as a fascinating read." Diana Henry, Telegraph "Red Sands follows in the footsteps of Caroline Eden's previous volume Black Sea. Both are pleasures to read, triangulating journalism, literary writing, and cookbookery. The recipes are part of the reporting, and Eden describes them as edible snapshots." Devra First, Boston Globe Red Sands, the follow-up to Caroline Eden’s multi-award-winning Black Sea, is a reimagining of traditional travel writing using food as the jumping-off point to explore Central Asia. In a quest to better understand this vast heartland of Asia, Caroline navigates a course from the shores of the Caspian Sea to the sun-ripened orchards of the Fergana Valley. A book filled with human stories, forgotten histories and tales of adventure, Caroline is a reliable guide using food as her passport to enter lives, cities and landscapes rarely written about. Lit up by emblematic recipes, Red Sands is an utterly unique book, bringing in universal themes that relate to us all: hope, hunger, longing, love and the joys of eating well on the road.
Download or read book The Forgotten Memories of the Legendary Path written by Linnik/Watson 7th Grade Team 2011-2012 and published by Lulu.com. This book was released on 2012-03-05 with total page 241 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The seventh graders of High Tech Middle Chula Vista, located just south of San Diego, California, have researched cities along the ancient Silk Road in order to write creative poems, journals, narratives, and travel guides about these legendary places. While researching, we discovered a multitude of obstacles that travelers and traders would have had to overcome: the deathly Taklamakan Desert, the icy paths along the Tian Shan Mountains, bandits, and a constant battle with a lack of vital resources. Let this book take you on a caravan ride into the past. In this collection of thrilling adventures, nostalgic poetry, and informational articles, you will be taken on a journey through "Forgotten Memories of the Legendary Path."
Download or read book Back to Istanbul written by Bernard Ollivier and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2023-11-07 with total page 248 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: After trekking nearly 7,500 miles, from Istanbul, Turkey to Xi’an, China, French travel writer Bernard Ollivier thought he had put the Silk Road behind him—enough for a retiree to rest on his laurels! But that was before meeting his now-partner-in-life Bénédicte Flatet. Why, she asked, hadn’t he set out from France? After all, the city of Lyon was once Europe’s silk capital. Now, at seventy-five years old, Ollivier decides to lace up his walking boots and head out to complete his Silk-Road journey, once and for all: 1,900 miles, from Lyon to Istanbul. Only this time, he won’t be alone. Flatet has long yearned to hike side-by-side with Ollivier, so the couple sets out together . . . This unexpected fourth volume in Ollivier’s Silk Road series (Out of Istanbul, Walking to Samarkand, and Winds of the Steppe) is a wonderful bonus for the author’s fans: not only is it the enthralling continuation of his long walk across Asia, it’s a new journey unto itself, across Europe, full of delightful firsts, such as the inclusion of short chronicles by Flatet. Through ten countries—from familiar France and Italy to the more mysterious Balkans—the intrepid pair invites us to discover the sometimes happy, sometimes tragic history of those they encounter, and to share in their daily lives. Back to Istanbul is both a fervent appeal for greater understanding among peoples, and a magnificent declaration of love.
Download or read book The Golden Road to Samarkand written by Wilfrid Blunt and published by . This book was released on 1973 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Meditation The Way of Self Realization written by Taoshobuddha and published by Sterling Publishers Pvt. Ltd. This book was released on 2008-04-01 with total page 388 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Book & CD. A real master will not try to convince you of the truth, but he will definitely persuade you towards it. A master can only help you in removing the obstacles so that meditation happens! The purpose of this book is to expose you to the path of Great Masters like Buddha, Nanak, Jesus, Mohammed and other flowers like Socrates, Heraclitus, Lau Tzu, Lei Tzu, Krishna, Ramakrishna, Raman, Osho, etc. The names are many more; only one has to be prepared for the journey. Your body is the temple of the unknown. It is a miracle of the unknown! The harmony that the body creates may become the door to inner harmony! Breathing is the alphabet of the body and through it one is easily bridged to meditation. One only has to be aware of it! One simply is! No thinking. No feeling. This is the ultimate experience of bliss! Beyond this there is nothing! This is the eternal search! You have arrived home! This is meditation! The audio CD leads you through Guided Meditation.
Download or read book Prayer Walking written by Steve Hawthorne and published by Charisma Media. This book was released on 2014-06-09 with total page 204 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: DIVOrdinary believers are stepping into the streets to pray effectively for their neighbors. With eyes open to real needs and with ears open to the promptings of God's Spirit, intercession becomes an adventure. /div
Download or read book Golden Road to Samarkand written by Wilfrid Blunt and published by . This book was released on 1973 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Chasing the Sea written by Tom Bissell and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2007-12-18 with total page 394 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 1996, Tom Bissell went to Uzbekistan as a na•ve Peace Corps volunteer. Though he lasted only a few months before illness and personal crisis forced him home, Bissell found himself entranced by this remote land. Five years later he returned to explore the shrinking Aral Sea, destroyed by Soviet irrigation policies. Joining up with an exuberant translator named Rustam, Bissell slips more than once through the clutches of the Uzbek police as he makes his often wild way to the devastated sea. In Chasing the Sea, Bissell combines the story of his travels with a beguiling chronicle of Uzbekistan’s striking culture and long history of violent subjugation by despots from Jenghiz Khan to Joseph Stalin. Alternately amusing and sobering, this is a gripping portrait of a fascinating place, and the debut of a singularly gifted young writer.
Download or read book Walking the Beach to Bellingham written by Harvey Manning and published by . This book was released on 2002 with total page 276 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This memoir by noted writer and environmental activist Harvey Manning recounts a 150-mile walk along Puget Sound from Seattle to Bellingham. An exhilarating tale of low adventure, it combines the author's experiences with memories of particular beaches over many decades and reflections on the area's natural history.
