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(Above) A string of camels stride across the dunes in Xinjiang’s Taklamakan Desert; today tourists take turns riding for short distances through the harsh but bewitching landscape, but in days of yore merchants spent gruelling months traversing this enormous sea of sand. (Previous page) The magnificent Hall of Prayer for a Good Harvest in Beijing’s Temple of Heaven complex. (Following page) The great Cascade Fountain in Peterhof, Peter the Great’s Summer Palace on the outskirts of St Petersburg.

Bijan Omraniwith

additional material by

Jeremy Tredinnick

Tales of Travel on the

Trans-Siberian & Silk Road

Backed by the mighty peaks of the Karakoram, Baltit Fort in Pakistan’s Hunza Valley occupied an important strategic point for merchants and armies crossing between Central Asia and the subcontinent.

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(Left) Colourfully dressed Uzbek women share a joke in Bukhara, once one of the great trading cities of the ancient “Silk Road”, now part of the modern state of Uzbekistan.

Editor’s Note

he production of this book presented us with some interesting challenges due to its vast geographical and historical scope. Consider Eurasia’s great land routes: offspring of the ambition of Russian tsars, Chinese emperors and Mughal khans, they have served human history well, acting as conduits for

trade, religion and cultural conventions, and as avenues down which conquering armies and commercial pioneers swarmed in the forging of empires. But what was it really like to travel the iron rails of the Trans-Siberian Railway in its early years, the dusty, parched tracks of the Silk Road in its heyday, or the rugged, dangerous mountain passes into and out of the Indian subcontinent?

In answering this question, author Bijan Omrani has woven a tapestry of fascinating tales and reports by a panoply of travellers down the centuries, taking the reader on an exciting journey that crosses continents and spans epochs. In illustrating his text we were inevitably limited – in the main – to the 19th century development of photography, but the sheer volume of material available, once research had begun, took us on our own journey of discovery, complete with no little consternation at first, but eventually a great sense of fulfilment. With hindsight it was a wholly appropriate process.

A note on place and name spellings: The constant ebb and flow of empires, kingdoms and their cultures into and out of Siberia, China, Central Asia and the Near East has resulted in an often bewildering list of possible spellings for towns, regions and peoples. Some spellings differ only slightly (ie Yekaterinburg/Ekaterinburg, or Bukhara/Bokhara), while others are entirely distinct (ie Khanbaliq/Peking/Beijing, or Yarkand/Shache); romanization and other forms of transliteration from different sources create literary conflict wherever one looks. We have tried to remain consistent in using what we believe to be the most common English usage of a place or person, with historical names in brackets where these are entirely different to the modern day. However, if you do venture into these lands, either physically on an adventurous holiday or from the comfort of home through the avenue of literature, be prepared for the confusing range of nomenclature that will present itself.

A note on dates: Varied religions are represented in the diverse countries through which this book’s tales take us, from Orthodox Russia to Taoist and Buddhist China and Islamic Central Asia. With deference to this, when referring to dates the conventional Christian terms “BC” (Before Christ) and “AD” (Anno Domini) have been replaced by the more neutral “BCE” (before Common Era) and “CE” (Common Era), whereby “Common” simply refers to the Gregorian Calendar, the most widely recognised and used timeline reference in the world today.

Jeremy Tredinnick

A close-up view of the Monument to Kozma Minin and Prince Dmitri Pozharsky in Moscow’s Red Square, with the remarkable coloured domes of St Basil’s Cathedral in the background.

The 48-metre (157-foot) Kalon Minaret in Bukhara was an impressive and welcome sight for caravans toiling across the desert steppe. An awed Genghis Khan was said to have bowed at its base and ordered it not to be destroyed, but in later years it was known as the “Tower of Death” for the practice of tying criminals in a sack and throwing them from its heights.

14 As i A Ov e r lAn d 15

Contents

Acknowledgements & Thanks ...............................10

Editor’s Note ...................................................................13

Introduction ...................................................................23

The Steel Road ........................................26

St Petersburg and the Way There ....................26

Moscow and the Way There ..............................42

The Steel Road: Building the Trans- Siberian Railway ..................................................72

A New World Opens Up ....................................86

The Sacred Baikal ..................................................145

To the Great Ocean ..............................................151

Siberia to Peking: Travelling the Tea Road ................................168

The Silk Road ..........................................204

Peking ........................................................................204

Towards the Jade Gate .......................................228

Into the Western Regions .................................267

The Heart of Central Asia ................................310

The Trans-Caspian Railway ............................369

Persia: Civilisation Reached ............................380

Constantinople: Road’s End ............................433

The Mughal Route ........................447

The Way to India ..................................................447

The Mughal Caravan ..........................................472

Modern-day Highlights .................484

St Petersburg to Vladivostok and Beijing ...484

Beijing to Istanbul ................................................493

Central Asia to India ..........................................505

Advice for the Traveller ..............512

When to go ..............................................................512

What to wear ..........................................................512

Essential items ........................................................512

Travel Insurance ....................................................513

Accommodation ...................................................513

Travelling by Train ...............................................514

Cultural Dos and Don’ts .....................................515

Food & Drink .........................................................516

Festivals and Public Holidays ...........................518

Visas ............................................................................518

Travel Advisories ...................................................519

Useful Websites .....................................................519

Contents

Recommended Reading .......................523

Tour and Travel Operators .......526

Index ..........................................................................532

Contemporary Maps

The Great Land Routes of Eurasia (West) ..........................................front end paper

The Great Land Routes of Eurasia (East) .............................................back end paper

The Trans-Siberian Railway .......................56–57

Marco Polo’s Route through Asia ..................205

The Silk Road – China .......................................279

Network of Commercial Land and Sea

Routes (2nd-7th centuries CE) .................236

Route of Zhang Qian’s First Journey into

the West ...............................................................259

The Silk Road – Central Asia ..........................329

The Silk Road – Persia & Turkey ..................399

The Mughal Routes .............................................457

Archive Maps St Petersburg, 1903 .................................................29

Moscow, 1610 ...........................................................45

Kremlenagrad, 1664 ..............................................46

The Eastern Trans-Siberian line, 1897 ........131

Tomsk, 1898 ...........................................................135

The World (early 17th century Jesuit map) ...........................................................213

“The Kingdome of China” .................................243

The Fra Mauro Map of the World ................243

Persia, 1814 ...................................................386–387

Constantinople during the Byzantine Period ...................................................................436

19th Century Asia ...............................................493

Satellite images Lake Baikal region .................................................180

The Tien Shan .......................................................280

The Taklamakan Desert ....................................293

The Pamirs and Ferghana Valley ..........322–323

Northwest Iran and Turkey .............................398

Turkey .......................................................................422

The Bosphorus and Istanbul ............................423

The Kunlun, Karakoram and Himalaya ranges, & Kashmir Valley ..............................452

The island of Akdamar in Turkey’s Lake Van, located in the far east of the country, is home to the 10th century Armenian Church of the Holy Cross. Travellers heading for Constantinople from Persia passed between the lake and the high mountain range dominated by Mt Ararat (not shown here).

18 As i A Ov e r lAn d 1�

A 19th century albumen print by William Carrick shows two local women outside a bark shelter in Siberia, a good example of local ingenuity in using the most readily available material in the taiga forest regions.

Introduction

f all the fatuities uttered in the English poetic corpus, perhaps nothing more foolish has been written than “East is East and West is West and ne’er the twain shall meet”.

Anyone conscious of the history of travel will be aware of the absurdity of the statement. There was never any time that the West or East were cloistered away from each other. From the earliest times of humanity across the great routes of Asia, there have been exchanges of people, of goods and ideas. Lapis lazuli from the most distant corners of Afghanistan adorned the funerary masks of the Egyptian Pharaohs 2,000 years before Christ; the war chariots of ancient Assyria in modern-day Iraq were owed to the nomads of the great steppe of today’s Kazakhstan; and it was to the same region that the early empires of China turned their gaze when they sought the fabled “blood-sweating” horses, a breed which would be worthy to defend their frontiers.

As legion and varied as these goods and ideas were the travellers themselves who – at great personal risk and with no small courage – brought them across the vast intervening distances. They might be hardy migrants in search of a better life or refugees from war and invasion; empire-builders and conquerors; merchants in pursuit of gain; ambassadors or adventurers; holy men seeking scriptures or even converts; unwilling prisoners, disciplined soldiers or ingenius spies. There were botanists and antiquaries, hearty builders of railways and highways, lunatics on quixotic quests, and others who came driven purely by a lust for knowing.

So great was their number, and so many were their works, that many, on account of space, I have been compelled to omit. No tome of reasonable size could hope on so grand a subject to be comprehensive, and it has been grievous to leave aside much that was worthy of inclusion. For all this, I hope that this book will not only act as a satisfactory introduction to the ways of travel in Asia and Siberia before the luxuries of the aeroplane and the contemporary age, but also serve to remind the reader of how intertwined, by means of travel, the West and the East have always been, and the abiding importance of each to the other.

Bijan Omrani

in t rO d u c t i O n

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the steel rOAd

St Petersburg and the Way There

n a warm summer’s day in 1891, an English traveller, Harry de Windt, crossed the German frontier with Russia, at the beginning of a journey that was to take him over 6,000 miles (almost 10,000 kilometres) to the farthest regions of Siberia. De Windt was a seasoned

explorer, a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society, and no stranger to Russia. A few years earlier, he had travelled overland in the opposite direction from Peking to Calais across the Russian Empire, and he knew as well as any the discomforts that his forthcoming journey would entail. As the post train from Paris carried him eastwards on its four-day journey across Europe towards St Petersburg, he could barely help thinking on the discomforts that he would shortly be facing. He foresaw endless hours and days in a sledge, or tarantass, jolting madly over pot-holed roads at the mercy of a vodka-soaked coachman; the prospect of waiting hungry hours in a vermin-ridden post-station while replacement horses were sought; the danger of collisions on the way; of robbery by escaped convicts hiding out in the forests; of crashing through the ice and drowning as they crossed an imperfectly frozen river. As he pondered over these things from the luxury of his first-class wagon lit, the anticipation seemed to make him appreciate all the more the comforts which at that moment he still enjoyed, and become all the more angry when anything failed to come up to standard.

“Will the Germans never understand the art of travelling in comfort?” he asked in his journal, as he was hustled out of his sleeping compartment at 8 o’clock in the morning, and forced to cover a great part of the German leg of the journey towards Russia in a small stuffy carriage, tackily furnished in red velvet and antimacassars, reeking of orange peel and stale cigar smoke. Things got little better when they stopped at Hanover for lunch: “A cup of tepid, gritty coffee, some tough, half-raw beef floating in grease, are the only provisions procurable the whole livelong day.”

The sights of the German countryside, however, served to mollify him as he drew closer to the Russian border. It being a Sunday, the fields were deserted, and the train was filled with holidaymakers being dropped off at rural stations along the way. The German railway stations, he noted, were like chalets, enfolded in lime trees, rosebushes and honeysuckle. The narrow platforms were turned into the sites of impromptu parties: “Plain and perspiring German females, still plainer and somewhat inebriated German men, with a sprinkling of soldiers in stiffly starched white uniforms, looking as if they had walked out of

a toy-box, shared out trays of beer, fruit and punch, singing folk songs, laughing and enjoying the fresh pine-scented country air.”

These last bucolic memories of Germany were strong in de Windt’s mind as the train pulled across the Russo-German frontier. The train departed the final German outpost, Eydtkunen, and then moved slowly over the physical marks of the border: a strip of neutral territory, wild, uncultivated and overgrown, and then an iron bridge above a small stream. By the crossing was a solitary figure, a Cossack standing to attention in a black and white sentry box, alone and enveloped in a drab-coloured greatcoat, high boots, a white linen cap, leaning slightly on his rifle. Beyond him, everything seemed to be strangely and suddenly reversed.

It was hardly favourable to the country he had entered. The snug homesteads, trim hedgerows and well-cultivated fields of Germany gave place to tumbledown log huts and carelessly sown crops, intersected by vast tracts of wild wasteland and pine forest. However, by the same token, the amenities for travellers enjoyed a wonderful transformation. At Eydtkunen, all had been dirt, discomfort and confusion. Stopping at the first station in the Russian Empire, Wirballen, for Customs and an inspection of passports, de Windt was almost overwhelmed to discover a cool and spacious dining room decked out in immaculate linen, glass and bright silver. “No greasy scalding soup or petrified sandwiches nor warm lemonade,” he joyfully recorded as he helped himself to iced wine and Russian tea.

The quality of officialdom was equally improved. The Customs officers, he declared, were the least troublesome in Europe. They might occasionally prove obstructive to a German traveller, but a Frenchman seldom, and an Englishman never. His 300 cigars and near unlimited supply of tobacco were waived through without interest, and although his Kodak camera was taken into another room for close examination, he was given permission to proceed. His passport, and those of his fellow travellers, were handed back – save one, belonging to a rather shabby-looking fellow from Switzerland – and they returned to the St Petersburg train.

arry de Windt’s journey marks something of a watershed in the history of Russian travel. At the same time as he was heading for St Petersburg in 1891, Grand Duke Nicholas, son and heir of the reigning Tsar Alexander III, was in Vladivostok, Russia’s stronghold on the Pacific

coast. Here, he laid the foundation stones for the Trans-Siberian railway line, which within 10 years was to consign to oblivion the old-fashioned sledge journeys across Siberia along the ancient post road. Yet, although de Windt was one of the last to travel in that fashion, he was only one of an innumerable succession of travellers who were to be drawn over the centuries into the deep heart of Asiatic Russia.

Before him there had been convicts and colonists, fur-trappers and gold prospectors. There had been political exiles, princes and princesses condemned to hard labour in the mines of Chita or Nerchinsk, or else to languish away from their families and the cosmopolitan society of the capital in the peasant villages of the Siberian steppe. There were ambassadors and tea traders, headed for Peking across the wilds of the Mongolian desert, seeking favour or good fortune at the hand of the Emperor of China. There were missionaries and ethnographers, horrified or fascinated in equal measure by the shamanism and sacrifices of the aboriginal tribes, seeking either to eradicate or else to save from oblivion the extraordinary beliefs and customs that they found. And after the time of de Windt, when the new Trans-Siberian Railway slashed the journey time across Asia from months to days, and for a fare of £12 (US$20) one could view