Two Stops Past Siberia

In Mr. Thubron’s 2006 travelogue, he takes us from Xi’an, in north-central China, overland to Antioch, on the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea in Turkey. The book is pleasantly replete with Thubron’s characteristic pros, which consistently border on poetry. Along with his off-the-beaten-track destinations, we are also made privy to Thubron’s past acquaintances, as this journey takes us to subjects who have appeared before in his work.

In this volume, we start in the tomb of the first emperor of China, the Yellow Emperor. From there on, throughout the entire journey, Thubron connects the road he is on with the silk that it once carried. Along the entire journey, in fact, his historical detailing finds the reader both relevant and entirely readable. During his final notes in Antioch, he tells us how both Chinese producers and Roman consumers believed that the other end of the trade route housed a race of purity and peace, totally unknown to the other.

On each leg of the journey, Mr. Thubron finds experiences thanks both to his personal decisions and those out of his control. In China, he takes in tourist attractions, typically overrun with sightseers, virtually devoid of life thanks to the SARS epidemic. In Kyrgyzstan, he consciously declines formal transportation, and instead effectively hitch hikes from the Chinese border. In Iran he climbs a cliff face without protection, and even faces the terrors of war-torn Afghanistan. These decisions, though often dangerous in nature, don’t come across as thrill seeking, but only as manifestations of his curiosity, and it is those decisions that endear us to him.

But despite all of the adventure and lyricism, Shadow of the Silk Road comes across as an inherently sad story. Perhaps tempered by the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan (though seldom mentioned), most of Mr. Thubron’s subjects are sad ones, and, as is the nature of the area, most of the sights are old and decaying. Most telling of this tone (and memorable in the book itself) is the recurring Sogdian trader, in whom Thubron confides what is surely the saddest part of his tale, and that of all modern travelers. Unlike the ancient Sogdian, who would have left home on dangerous journeys for years at a time, Thubron admits that his greatest fear is that, “nothing will happen.” Though thankfully for us, and for Thubron himself, plenty does.

Highly recommended