Colin Thubron · 2006 · global

Colin Thubron's account of travelling the Silk Road from China to the Mediterranean in his late sixties, by bus, lorry, taxi and horse. He made it in two stages, driven back the first time by SARS, and went seven thousand miles through western China, Central Asia, Afghanistan and Iran to the coast at Antioch, where the road ends.

1. 1
   Xi'an

   The road starts at the old Chinese capital, where the caravans once formed up and the terracotta army lies outside the walls - and Thubron sets off west at an age when most travel writers have stopped.

2. 2
   Lanzhou

   Out along the Gansu corridor past the end of the Great Wall, through a China that grows steadily less Chinese - Hui Muslims, Tibetan monasteries, and a modernity arriving faster than anyone in the villages can absorb.

3. 3
   Kashgar

   At Kashgar, the far western corner of China, the Sunday market is Central Asian rather than Chinese - and the Uighur city Thubron had read about is being demolished and rebuilt around him as he watches.

4. 4
   Mashhad

   Through the Pamirs and Afghanistan into Iran, and at Mashhad the shrine of the eighth Imam draws pilgrims by the million - the first great Shia city on a road that has been changing religion every few hundred miles.

5. 5
   Tehran

   Across Persia through cities of the old trade, talking to people who speak with a frankness that surprises him about the Revolution, the war with Iraq and what they expect of their own government.

6. 6
   Antioch

   The road ends where it always ended, at Antioch on the Mediterranean - a provincial Turkish town now, where the silk was loaded for Rome and where Thubron stops after seven thousand miles.