Nikolai Przhevalsky · 1876 · overland

Przhevalsky's account of the 1870 to 1873 expedition, the first of four into Central Asia. A Russian officer travelling as a naturalist and understood by everyone to be doing more than that - seven thousand miles, five thousand plant specimens, and the wild horse that still carries his name.

1. 1
   Kyakhta

   The Russian frontier post on the Mongolian border, and the start of the first expedition in 1870 - a Russian army officer with three companions, a Berdan rifle and instructions to collect everything.

2. 2
   Urga

   Ulaanbaatar, and the road south across the Gobi to Peking - Przhevalsky travelling as a private naturalist and functioning, everybody understood, as an intelligence officer of the Russian General Staff.

3. 3
   Kalgan

   Through the Great Wall at the pass, and the caravan trade between China and Mongolia - the point at which the expedition turns west and stops following anybody's road.

4. 4
   The Ordos

   The great bend of the Yellow River, and the loop of desert inside it - surveyed in the winter of 1871, with the temperature at minus thirty and the collections carried on camels.

5. 5
   Alashan

   The desert west of the Ordos, and the shifting dunes - Przhevalsky's method being to march, shoot, measure and record, and to be openly contemptuous of almost everyone he met.

6. 6
   Koko Nor

   Qinghai Lake, the great salt lake on the edge of Tibet, reached in 1872 - and the Tangut country beyond it, which gives the book its title and which no European had described.

7. 7
   Tsaidam

   The salt marsh basin, and the attempt on Lhasa - turned back five hundred miles short by exhaustion, dwindling supplies and the plain fact that the Tibetans would not let him through.

8. 8
   The upper Yangtze

   The headwaters, the furthest point south, and the collections that made the reputation: five thousand plants, a thousand birds, and a wild horse nobody in Europe had seen, which still carries his name.

9. 9
   Kyakhta

   Back after three years and seven thousand miles on foot and camel - and a book that made him famous, three more expeditions, and a death of typhus in 1888 setting out on the fifth.