The Old Silk Road - a journey of a life time!

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Tian Chi (Heavenly Lake) an alpine lake in Xinjiang, far northwest China. Over the mountains is desert.

In a few days we start a long, mostly overland, journey from the ancient capitals of China - Beijing and Xi'an, through the ‘gate’ of the eastern terminus of the Old Silk Road across the Taklamakan and Kyzylkum Deserts, through remote and mysterious mountain ranges and the vast steppes of Central Asia to ‘Constantinople’ - along the ancient Silk Road. Then we travel further west via the old Orient Express route to Paris and beyond to explore the wild islands, coastline and Neolithic sites of Scotland and Ireland ....... plus more. We go equipped with as little as necessary in weight but loads of preparation and excitement.
In Central Asia, we will travel over 10,000 km along the Old Silk Road in the footsteps of traders, monks, explorers, camels and horses, not to mention diplomats and 'colonisers' in search of wealth. They say to follow the Silk Road through the heart of Asia is to follow a ghost, to sink back in time. The original route has vanished save for the curious – people like us! In fact there was not just one Silk Road. The routes changed according to the most lucrative destinations as well as local conditions - weather, natural disaster and ‘wars’, but all routes were central to trade and cultural exchange. They threaded across Asia’s highest mountains and bleakest deserts. It was history’s original information superhighway, a route for the exchange of ideas, goods and technology. The network had its main eastern terminus at the Chinese capital Chang’an, today’s Xi’an. Interestingly, it was China’s need for horses to do battle with the invading nomads on its northern borders that provided much of the impetus for the early development of the Silk Road - silk was traded in exchange for a steady supply of horses: the heavenly Han Xue Ma horses from the Valley of Ferghana.
This ancient cultural and economic superhighway is being redeveloped as the ‘Silk Road Economic Belt’ - a development strategy proposed by the Chinese government to encourage connectivity and cooperation between Eurasian countries. A rose by any other name! The region is very rich in natural resources and has been fought over for thousands of years by big world players – the Persians, Mongols, Russians, the Greeks - all vying for regional dominance. The cost as always has been the lives of countless thousands of locals.  Ah the history of the world! So be it.  

Reading about the history of the region has held me spell-bound for months and I’m anxious to be there! For instance, it was along this route that the oldest printed book, the Diamond Sutra was discovered by British-Hungarian archaeologist Marc Ariel Stein in the early 1900s while on an expedition mapping the ancient Silk Road. The 5-metre long text was originally discovered in 1900 by a monk in Dunhuang, an old outpost on the Silk Road on the edge of the Gobi Desert (sadly for us it is on the  southern arm of the Silk Road and we will take the northern route through the Dzungarian Gap to track along the northern edge of the Tian Shan mountains). The Diamond Sutra, a Sanskrit text translated into Chinese, was one of 40,000 scrolls and documents hidden in ‘The Cave of a Thousand Buddhas’, a secret library sealed up around the year 1,000 when the area was threatened by a neighbouring kingdom.  It is a fascinating story of exploration is a fairly hostile region. I recommend you read ‘Journeys on the Silk Road’ by Morgan and Walters - it is intriguing and will have you wanting to keep turning page after page - or perhaps that’s just me, a desert-mystery lover.

Countries we will travel through on 'The Road' - China, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Iran and Turkey. Along the way we will pass many ancient sites and stunning scenery. For instance, Tian Chi (Heavenly Lake) an alpine lake in Xinjiang, far NW China, which we will visit in a mere 14 days!