The Silk Route Adventure

By Claire Burges Watson

Rebelling against the predictability of banking life, and with only her wits to equip her, Claire sets off on her own on an eighteen-month, 6,000-kilometre horseback adventure across Central Asia.

Silk Route Adventure takes you through rolling Mongolian prairie lands, monotonous Kazakh steppes, scales 4,000-metre passes in Kyrgyzstan, and crosses the black sands of the Karakum Desert in Turkmenistan. Throughout the journey the author overcomes numerous obstacles and dangers, such as drunken and sometimes violent guides, hostile border police, raging rivers, snow-bound passes and seemingly endless stretches of desert. She fights to keep her horses alive and supplied with fodder in the bitter Kazakh winter and the unbearable heat of the Fergana Valley.

In contrast to her remote and often harsh surroundings, coupled with the brutal realities of life in Central Asia after the collapse of the Soviet Union, she encounters the warm tradition of nomadic hospitality, witnessing a way of life largely untouched by modernity. Woven into the story of her adventure Claire sets Mongolia and the ‘Stans’ in their historical context, tracing their history from the height of Genghis Khan’s reign to their absorption into the Soviet Union when they were largely forgotten by the West. Silk Route Adventure is an enthralling account of a seemingly impossible journey completed by a determined and eminently resourceful woman.