I was browsing through my bookshelf a couple of days ago and came across an old copy of From Heaven Lake by Vikram Seth. As I hadn't read the book in over a decade, I started re-reading it. The book describes a hitchhiking journey that Seth took through western China (Xinjiang) and Tibet to reach India in the early 1980s. At that time he was an exchange student in Nanjing University and wanted to return home one summer by traveling through a part of the silk route. In his travelogue he talks about the changing landscapes and the people he meets as he moves through deserts, grasslands, flooded river basins and the Tibetan plateau. I thoroughly enjoyed reading From Heaven Lake again.
The book then got me thinking about the silk route. Seth starts his tale in Turfan- a town in the Xinjiang (Sinkiang) province of western China. The names of other Silk Road towns like Kashgar, Khotan, Samarkand and Bukhara bring up so many colourful images to my mind. Since yesterday I have been thinking about how I can travel at least a part of this route. Covering even a small part of the route would mean going through at least three countries (China, Uzbekistan, and Kazakhstan to start with). Some of these regions are quite volatile politically. A quick search on the internet shows that various travel groups in China offer guided tours of the silk road. However, like Seth, I too detest the regimentation of organized trips. They also don't come cheap. Since I don't speak Chinese (like Seth does), I am quite incapable of making my own impromptu travel arrangements even if I somehow manage to land in one of these towns. I still need to figure out a way to make this trip happen. Hopefully before 2020.
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