About the Author and the Text

Nick Middleton is a British geographer, travel writer and broadcaster who teaches geography at Oxford. He is best known for his travels to remote and extreme corners of the world, which he records in vivid, first-person travel books. Silk Road is an extract from his account of a journey across the high Tibetan plateau, and it belongs to the tradition of the travelogue — a piece of writing in which a traveller describes, in order, the places, people and difficulties met along a real journey.

In this extract the author sets out from the settlement of Ravu and travels south-west across the vast, wild Changtang plateau towards sacred Mount Kailash, which he hopes to circle on foot in the ritual walk known as the kora. Driven by his resourceful Tibetan guide Tsetan, and accompanied for part of the way by his interpreter Daniel, he crosses open plains alive with gazelles and wild ass, is chased by fierce Tibetan mastiffs, and inches his vehicle over snow-blocked mountain passes as high as 5,515 metres. Along the way he notes how the old Silk Road trade routes once linked Tibet with China and Kashmir. Reaching the grim town of Hor beside Lake Manasarovar and then Darchen, he falls ill with a cold and altitude sickness, is treated with Tibetan medicine, and — just when he fears he must abandon the pilgrimage for lack of a companion — meets a cheerful Tibetan academic, Norbu, who also wants to attempt the kora. The narrative mixes adventure, sharp observation of landscape and people, and dry humour.