Exploring Top Books of Shelfari

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... (more)

The Last Secrets of the Silk Road: In the Footsteps of Marco Polo by Horse and Camel

The Last Secrets of the Silk Road: In the Footsteps of Marco Polo by Horse and Camel

by Countess Alexandra Tolstoy

After graduating from the University of Edinburgh in the summer of 1996, Alexandra Tolstoy began working for an investment banking firm in New York and London, only to quit within a year. Like many twentysomethings, she longed to travel, to find adventure - and soon those longings found their outlet, when she learned that an acquaintance dreamed of riding the ancient Silk Road on horses and camels. Before long, a... (more)

Tales from the Torrid Zone

by Alexander Frater

From one of the most celebrated travel writers at work today—a vibrantly observant, witty, utterly captivating account of a lifetime’s worth of travel between the Tropics of Cancer and Capricorn. Part memoir, part travelogue, all passionate appreciation, Tales from the Torrid Zone begins in Iririki, Alexander Frater’s birthplace. On this tiny island in the South Seas republic of Vanuatu, his grandfather, a... (more)

Chasing the Sea: Lost Among the Ghosts of Empire in Central Asia

Chasing the Sea: Lost Among the Ghosts of Empire in Central Asia

by Tom Bissell

In 1960, the Aral Sea was the size of Lake Michigan: a huge body of water in the deserts of Central Asia. By 1996, when Tom Bissell arrived in Uzbekistan as a naïve Peace Corps volunteer, disastrous Soviet irrigation policies had shrunk the sea to a third its size. Bissell lasted only a few months before complications forced him to return home, but he had already become obsessed with this beautiful, brutal land. ... (more)

The carpet wars

by Christopher Kremmer

Apart from oil, rugs are the Muslim world's best-known commodity. While rugs are found in most Western homes, the story of religious, political, and tribal strife behind their creation is virtually unknown. In The Carpet Wars, award-winning journalist Christopher Kremmer chronicles his fascinating ten-year journey along the ancient carpet trade routes that run through the world's most misunderstood and volatile... (more)

On the Road to Kandahar: Travels through Conflict in the Islamic World

On the Road to Kandahar: Travels through Conflict in the Islamic World

by Jason Burke

A daring reporter’s quest through the “living history” of Islam amid the War on Terrorism. In 1991, a British university student spent his summer break fighting alongside Kurdish guerrillas in northern Iraq. Now a prize-winning reporter and author of a book on al Qaeda, Jason Burke travels from the Sahara to the Himalayas and meets with refugees, mujahideen, and government ministers in a probing search to... (more)

The Afghan Amulet: Travels from the Hindu Kush (Tauris Parke Paperbacks)

The Afghan Amulet: Travels from the Hindu Kush (Tauris Parke Paperbacks)

by Sheila Paine

Intrigued by an exquisite and mysterious amulet on an antique dress from Kohistan, ‘land of mountains’ in Pakistan, Sheila Paine began an epic quest that took her from the peaks of the Himalaya to the shores of Greece. In this, the first part of her journey, she set off alone and undaunted for the wilds of the Hindu Kush, her only possessions a tiny rucksack and a litre of vodka. Over the course of several months... (more)

Frontiers of Heaven : A Journey to the End of China

Frontiers of Heaven : A Journey to the End of China

by Stanley Stewart

Winner of the Thomas Cook Travel Book Award For the Chinese, the Great Wall of China has defined much more than a physical barrier. Over the centuries it has represented a psychological frontier-within it lay the Celestial Kingdom, the compass of all civilization. Beyond lay a barbarian world of chaos and exile. Chinese journeys to the west along the ancient Silk Road were passages into the unknown, often into... (more)

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Tags: asian travelogue

Shadow of the Silk Road

by Colin Thubron