Peter Fleming · 1936 · global

Peter Fleming's 1936 account of a journey nobody had completed in eight years. With the Swiss traveller Ella Maillart, and no permission from anyone, he went three and a half thousand miles from Peking to Kashmir - across north Tibet and through a Sinkiang closed by civil war - travelling by lorry, pony, camel and on foot for seven months.

1. 1
   Peking

   Fleming, twenty-seven and correspondent for The Times, sets out in February 1935 to find out what is actually happening in Sinkiang - a province the size of France from which, for two years, no reliable news had come out at all.

2. 2
   Xi'an

   West by lorry and rail into a China at war with itself and with Japan, through the old capital where the Silk Road begins - and where the question becomes whose permission matters on which stretch of road.

3. 3
   Lanzhou

   At Lanchow on the Yellow River, the last place with anything resembling administration, they attach themselves to a party going west and begin travelling at the pace of animals rather than engines.

4. 4
   Xining

   Sining is the edge of Tibetan country, with the great monastery at Kumbum nearby - and beyond it the road becomes a matter of guides, grazing and whether the next stage has water.

5. 5
   The Tsaidam

   The Tsaidam is salt marsh and desert on the northern Tibetan plateau, crossed with camels and Mongol guides at altitude in the cold, weeks at a time between anything that could be called a settlement.

6. 6
   Cherchen

   Four months out they reach Cherchen on the southern rim of the Takla Makan, and the journey becomes a chain of oases along the desert's edge - Niya, Keriya, each one a day's ride and a new rest house.

7. 7
   Khotan

   At Khotan they are in Sinkiang proper, under officials answering to a governor allied with Moscow, where two foreigners travelling without papers are a problem nobody quite wants to solve by shooting them.

8. 8
   Kashgar

   Kashgar, the far western corner of China, has a British consulate and the first hot bath in months - and the arrival of two travellers who were assumed by everyone to have died somewhere in the Tsaidam.

9. 9
   Gilgit

   Over the Karakoram by Tashkurgan and the high passes into Hunza and Nagar, down into British India - the hardest walking of the whole journey, and the first ground where their presence is legal.

10. 10
    Srinagar

    Seven months and three and a half thousand miles after Peking, they come down into Kashmir - and Fleming, who spends the book making light of everything, allows that the trip was undertaken chiefly because they wanted to.