Synopses & Reviews
In 1932, long before traveling in Central Asia became fashionable, Ella Maillart travelled to Russian Turkestan, bordered by China, Tibet, Pakistan, and Afghanistan. Setting out from Moscow, she crossed Kyrgyzstan as far as the Tien Shan range (the Celestial Mountains). She climbed the 5,000 metre-high Sari Tor on makeshift skis, explored the legendary cities of Tashkent, Samarkand, Khiva and Bukhara, and crossed, solo, the freezing and hostile wastes of the Kizil Kum, the Desert of Red Sands.
Review
"An adventurer, travel writer and photographer who defied convention, hardship and international borders to explore forbidden territory and forbidding terrain..."--The New York Times
"This book is so instructive and so entertaining that the identity of its author is almost immaterial...the value of this book extends far beyond the orbit of geography and travel.'-- Sir E. Denison Ross
"Her account of the journey vividly documented the effects of Soviet modernisation on a still nomadic people."-- The Daily Telegraph
"She understood the importance of finding the similarities rather than the differences between people. It was this inquisitiveness which makes her part of the tradition of great women travellers...and an inspiration to women travellers of today."-- Sarah Anderson, The Independent
"Ella Maillart lived, with great zest, a rather vagabond life...a Swiss counterpart to Freya Stark."--The Times (London)
About the Author
Ella Maillart was one of the outstanding travelers of the 20th century. A successful athlete, writer and passionate photographer, she travelled widely throughout Europe, Russia, Central Asia, the Middle East, India and Nepal until her death in 1997. Dervla Murphy, the celebrated travel writer, is the author of Where the Indus is Young, South from the Limpopo, Eight Feet in the Andes, The Waiting Land and Through the Embers of Chaos.
Table of Contents
Part I: Lets and Hindrances * A Last Throw * Six Days on Board * Frunze * Tokmak * Along the Iron Way * Kara Kol * On to the Syrt * The First Aul * To the Source of the Iaxartes * Ak Bel, or the Desolate Valleys * Isolated Lives * Exploring "The White Bull" * Three New Passes * Last Days in Kirghizia * Part II: Alone * Tashkent * Pravda Vostoka * A Visit to an Anarchist Exile * The Answers of an Oriental President * Up in the Clouds * Samarkand the Incomparable * The Present * Yann Tells a Story * The Trial of the Bassmatchi * Bokhara the Fallen * Towards the Amu Daria * The Pelican's Store-Room * Turt Köl * Khiva * The Germans of Ak Metchet * A Race with the Ice * Towards the Unknown North * Three Hundred Miles Through the 'Desert of Red Sands' * Bibliography * Index