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3.86 AVERAGE
3.86 AVERAGE
A beautifully lyrical book. The blend of history and science and poetry is very compelling. A little slow at times, but in the end it left even this incredibly dedicated homebody itching for adventure.
Bicycle travel at its best. Harris and her friend Mel bike the Silk Road. Along the way Harris explores the idea of borders, their meaning, what they keep in, what they keep out. Fabulous book for a bit of armchair traveling.
As a child, Kate Harris wanted to be an explorer, to discover parts of the world that had not been seen by any human. It was as a teenage though that she realised that this dream was almost impossible as almost everywhere had been mapped and explored. As our planet had been so extensively explored, she decided to become a scientist and follow her dreams and explore Mars.
The appeal of seeing some of this planet first grew on her after trips to Italy and hearing the Dali Lama talk. Reading about the Himalaya’s brought out the desire to travel even more and decided to write her thesis about the Siachen Glacier. Knowing that a good result in this would mean she could qualify for her doctorate that she wanted to do, she poured her heart and soul into the work but feared for her marks after a conversation with her tutor. MIT beckoned… Her new tutor was not that keen on fieldwork, preferring to work in the lab, so she was dispatched to Yellowstone with some others. But all the time she was there, the silk road beckoned, and one day she decided that she wanted to cycle along it again.
Departing from Istanbul with her friend, Mel, they hear a young lad tell them not to crash. They choose to ignore him, preferring to savour the smell of the spices in the bazaar and head to the boat to cross the Bosporus where a chance meeting with a really old school friend means they miss their stop. Quickly resolved, they climb onto their bikes and set off. Turkey was a bit of a mixed bag, lovely people and food, but dirty and busy roads tarnished their opinion of it.
Passing from Turkey into the countries of the Caucasus is a reminder that this is an unsettled region and often subject to closed borders and warring enclaves. It is a change they can feel too, as they go from paved road to a cratered and potholed road and their speed drops accordingly. As they pass through Tbilisi in early March, the winter is just starting to lose its grip, trees were just showing the first buds and the light increased day by day.
They couldn’t cycle all parts of the journey, various sections were passed in trains or other transport, but they relish the time that they spend cycling, moving in the early morning to avoid the heat of the desert, deciding that they are too tired to wave at every driver that passes and trying to find somewhere to camp on the Tajikistan and Afghanistan border. The thing that they still don’t know is if they will be able to ride up onto the Tibetan Plateau to be able to complete their journey.
Our bicycles cast long cool shadows that grew and shrank with the desert’s rise and fall, its contours so subtle that we needed those shadows to see them. The severity of the land, the softness of the light – where opposites meet is magic.
Harris is not a bad writer and I thought this was a reasonable book overall. Sit feel like she is an observer of the people that she meets rather than fully engaging with them. There are lots of lovely little details and descriptions of the towns and villages they pass through. It was a shame that they couldn’t complete the whole journey by bicycle, but other factors made that almost impossible. Just didn’t have that extra something to lift this though.
The appeal of seeing some of this planet first grew on her after trips to Italy and hearing the Dali Lama talk. Reading about the Himalaya’s brought out the desire to travel even more and decided to write her thesis about the Siachen Glacier. Knowing that a good result in this would mean she could qualify for her doctorate that she wanted to do, she poured her heart and soul into the work but feared for her marks after a conversation with her tutor. MIT beckoned… Her new tutor was not that keen on fieldwork, preferring to work in the lab, so she was dispatched to Yellowstone with some others. But all the time she was there, the silk road beckoned, and one day she decided that she wanted to cycle along it again.
Departing from Istanbul with her friend, Mel, they hear a young lad tell them not to crash. They choose to ignore him, preferring to savour the smell of the spices in the bazaar and head to the boat to cross the Bosporus where a chance meeting with a really old school friend means they miss their stop. Quickly resolved, they climb onto their bikes and set off. Turkey was a bit of a mixed bag, lovely people and food, but dirty and busy roads tarnished their opinion of it.
Passing from Turkey into the countries of the Caucasus is a reminder that this is an unsettled region and often subject to closed borders and warring enclaves. It is a change they can feel too, as they go from paved road to a cratered and potholed road and their speed drops accordingly. As they pass through Tbilisi in early March, the winter is just starting to lose its grip, trees were just showing the first buds and the light increased day by day.
They couldn’t cycle all parts of the journey, various sections were passed in trains or other transport, but they relish the time that they spend cycling, moving in the early morning to avoid the heat of the desert, deciding that they are too tired to wave at every driver that passes and trying to find somewhere to camp on the Tajikistan and Afghanistan border. The thing that they still don’t know is if they will be able to ride up onto the Tibetan Plateau to be able to complete their journey.
Our bicycles cast long cool shadows that grew and shrank with the desert’s rise and fall, its contours so subtle that we needed those shadows to see them. The severity of the land, the softness of the light – where opposites meet is magic.
Harris is not a bad writer and I thought this was a reasonable book overall. Sit feel like she is an observer of the people that she meets rather than fully engaging with them. There are lots of lovely little details and descriptions of the towns and villages they pass through. It was a shame that they couldn’t complete the whole journey by bicycle, but other factors made that almost impossible. Just didn’t have that extra something to lift this though.
adventurous
reflective
medium-paced
This is an enjoyable read. It is the story of Kate Harris' and best friend Mel's epic bike journey along parts of the ancient Silk Road from Turkey to Tibet and on into India.
It is part memoir, part travelogue, and part history and natural history. Ultimately it is a book about borders: political, cultural and our own.
"Borders reinforce the idea of the alien, the Other, stories separate and distinct from ourselves. But would such fictions continue to stand if most of us didn't agree with them, or at least quietly benefit from the inequalities they bolster? The barbed wire begins here inside us, cutting through our very core."
If I could, I would give Kate 5 stars just for sheer guts and stamina. The book, however, has a few drawbacks. The largest is the fact that once the riders reached the heart of the Silk Road and especially the "Stans" (Ubekistan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan), the length of their visas was so short that all their time was spent trying to get across one country and to secure visas for the next one. And while this is not the author's fault, there was little or no time available to explore ancient cities or cultural sites.
While we get some cultural insight and history, I found it lacking, especially considering the title of the book. Ultimately it seemed anti-climatic.
Another drawback was that as the women reached the Silk Road the book began to loose focus. Were they undertaking this journey because it was Kate's childhood dream? Was it because she wanted to query various officials about the conservation of wild lands and other matters? Was it because she hated being constrained? Or was it because she just wanted to get away from her 21st century admittedly privileged life? I'm not sure she entirely knows.
That said, the book was still very much a good read. I was amazed by how knowledgeable and widely read she is, especially as she is at heart, and by education, a scientist. One minute she was quoting ancient historians, the next various philosophers. She certainly knew much about the countries she traveled through and the cultures she encountered. I just wish she had gone into more detail about these.
Lastly, I wish that there had been better photos than the small black and white ones at the chapter heads, and that the map had more detail especially in regards to the cities/towns they travelled through. These of course, are not the fault of the author.
This is a worthwhile read.
It is part memoir, part travelogue, and part history and natural history. Ultimately it is a book about borders: political, cultural and our own.
"Borders reinforce the idea of the alien, the Other, stories separate and distinct from ourselves. But would such fictions continue to stand if most of us didn't agree with them, or at least quietly benefit from the inequalities they bolster? The barbed wire begins here inside us, cutting through our very core."
If I could, I would give Kate 5 stars just for sheer guts and stamina. The book, however, has a few drawbacks. The largest is the fact that once the riders reached the heart of the Silk Road and especially the "Stans" (Ubekistan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan), the length of their visas was so short that all their time was spent trying to get across one country and to secure visas for the next one. And while this is not the author's fault, there was little or no time available to explore ancient cities or cultural sites.
While we get some cultural insight and history, I found it lacking, especially considering the title of the book. Ultimately it seemed anti-climatic.
Another drawback was that as the women reached the Silk Road the book began to loose focus. Were they undertaking this journey because it was Kate's childhood dream? Was it because she wanted to query various officials about the conservation of wild lands and other matters? Was it because she hated being constrained? Or was it because she just wanted to get away from her 21st century admittedly privileged life? I'm not sure she entirely knows.
That said, the book was still very much a good read. I was amazed by how knowledgeable and widely read she is, especially as she is at heart, and by education, a scientist. One minute she was quoting ancient historians, the next various philosophers. She certainly knew much about the countries she traveled through and the cultures she encountered. I just wish she had gone into more detail about these.
Lastly, I wish that there had been better photos than the small black and white ones at the chapter heads, and that the map had more detail especially in regards to the cities/towns they travelled through. These of course, are not the fault of the author.
This is a worthwhile read.
As a child, Kate Harris wanted to be an explorer, to discover parts of the world that had not been seen by any human. It was as a teenage though that she realised that this dream was almost impossible as almost everywhere had been mapped and explored. As our planet had been so extensively explored, she decided to become a scientist and follow her dreams and explore Mars.
The appeal of seeing some of this planet first grew on her after trips to Italy and hearing the Dali Lama talk. Reading about the Himalaya’s brought out the desire to travel even more and decided to write her thesis about the Siachen Glacier. Knowing that a good result in this would mean she could qualify for her doctorate that she wanted to do, she poured her heart and soul into the work but feared for her marks after a conversation with her tutor. MIT beckoned… Her new tutor was not that keen on fieldwork, preferring to work in the lab, so she was dispatched to Yellowstone with some others. But all the time she was there, the silk road beckoned, and one day she decided that she wanted to cycle along it again.
Departing from Istanbul with her friend, Mel, they hear a young lad tell them not to crash. They choose to ignore him, preferring to savour the smell of the spices in the bazaar and head to the boat to cross the Bosporus where a chance meeting with a really old school friend means they miss their stop. Quickly resolved, they climb onto their bikes and set off. Turkey was a bit of a mixed bag, lovely people and food, but dirty and busy roads tarnished their opinion of it.
Passing from Turkey into the countries of the Caucasus is a reminder that this is an unsettled region and often subject to closed borders and warring enclaves. It is a change they can feel too, as they go from paved road to a cratered and potholed road and their speed drops accordingly. As they pass through Tbilisi in early March, the winter is just starting to lose its grip, trees were just showing the first buds and the light increased day by day.
They couldn’t cycle all parts of the journey, various sections were passed in trains or other transport, but they relish the time that they spend cycling, moving in the early morning to avoid the heat of the desert, deciding that they are too tired to wave at every driver that passes and trying to find somewhere to camp on the Tajikistan and Afghanistan border. The thing that they still don’t know is if they will be able to ride up onto the Tibetan Plateau to be able to complete their journey.
Our bicycles cast long cool shadows that grew and shrank with the desert’s rise and fall, its contours so subtle that we needed those shadows to see them. The severity of the land, the softness of the light – where opposites meet is magic.
Harris is not a bad writer and I thought this was a reasonable book overall. Sit feel like she is an observer of the people that she meets rather than fully engaging with them. There are lots of lovely little details and descriptions of the towns and villages they pass through. It was a shame that they couldn’t complete the whole journey by bicycle, but other factors made that almost impossible. Just didn’t have that extra something to lift this though.
The appeal of seeing some of this planet first grew on her after trips to Italy and hearing the Dali Lama talk. Reading about the Himalaya’s brought out the desire to travel even more and decided to write her thesis about the Siachen Glacier. Knowing that a good result in this would mean she could qualify for her doctorate that she wanted to do, she poured her heart and soul into the work but feared for her marks after a conversation with her tutor. MIT beckoned… Her new tutor was not that keen on fieldwork, preferring to work in the lab, so she was dispatched to Yellowstone with some others. But all the time she was there, the silk road beckoned, and one day she decided that she wanted to cycle along it again.
Departing from Istanbul with her friend, Mel, they hear a young lad tell them not to crash. They choose to ignore him, preferring to savour the smell of the spices in the bazaar and head to the boat to cross the Bosporus where a chance meeting with a really old school friend means they miss their stop. Quickly resolved, they climb onto their bikes and set off. Turkey was a bit of a mixed bag, lovely people and food, but dirty and busy roads tarnished their opinion of it.
Passing from Turkey into the countries of the Caucasus is a reminder that this is an unsettled region and often subject to closed borders and warring enclaves. It is a change they can feel too, as they go from paved road to a cratered and potholed road and their speed drops accordingly. As they pass through Tbilisi in early March, the winter is just starting to lose its grip, trees were just showing the first buds and the light increased day by day.
They couldn’t cycle all parts of the journey, various sections were passed in trains or other transport, but they relish the time that they spend cycling, moving in the early morning to avoid the heat of the desert, deciding that they are too tired to wave at every driver that passes and trying to find somewhere to camp on the Tajikistan and Afghanistan border. The thing that they still don’t know is if they will be able to ride up onto the Tibetan Plateau to be able to complete their journey.
Our bicycles cast long cool shadows that grew and shrank with the desert’s rise and fall, its contours so subtle that we needed those shadows to see them. The severity of the land, the softness of the light – where opposites meet is magic.
Harris is not a bad writer and I thought this was a reasonable book overall. Sit feel like she is an observer of the people that she meets rather than fully engaging with them. There are lots of lovely little details and descriptions of the towns and villages they pass through. It was a shame that they couldn’t complete the whole journey by bicycle, but other factors made that almost impossible. Just didn’t have that extra something to lift this though.
"Be present, utterly present. This world deserves your deepest attention... Wake up. Keep your eyes focused on what's bigger than than the sadness directly in front of you..."
I'm a great believer in the idea that travel changes a person and I've always loved books (non-fiction or fiction) about long journeys. Not everyone can be fortunate enough to go on life changing expeditions, but armchair travel via a book like this one can still provide plenty of insights. In Lands of Lost Borders Canadian cyclist Kate Harris has written a beautiful book about journeys, both external and internal. I've seen several reviewers compare this book to Cheryl Strayed's Wild and while not wanting to throw shade on Strayed's book, there is simply no comparison for me, other than that they are both about women who go off on a long journey and find themselves. Harris' book is far more contemplative and less self-consumed than Strayed's. She isn't spending time trying to figure out why she's a hot mess. She offers deep thoughts about exploration, the changing nature of scientific inquiry, and about the countries, people and borders of Central Asia. She and her travel partner Mel endure bitter cold, bureaucracy, isolation, yet are buoyed by the warmth and benevolence of people as they cycle through some of the remotest and most inhospitable corners of the world. Through it all, from Darwin to Sagan, Harris contemplates the explorers and scientists who have inspired her and who make her question what a true life of adventure and exploration really looks like. Though she began with yearning for Mars, Harris seems to have made her peace with adventure here on Earth.
The evolution of Harris' Silk Road experience is told both in this book and on her original blogging site, Cycling Silk. You can also find a short video of her journey with her friend Mel here. The cyclists were fortunate in the period of time during which they embarked on their Silk Road journey, as many of the regions have since undergone further political and internal struggles. Giving us a sense of the vastness and wonder of the journey itself, rather than her destination, from Istanbul, Turkey to Leh, Ladakh, Harris's account of her wanderlust is sure to become a classic in the genre of travel narratives.
I received a Digital Review Copy and a paper review copy, in exchange for an honest review.
I'm a great believer in the idea that travel changes a person and I've always loved books (non-fiction or fiction) about long journeys. Not everyone can be fortunate enough to go on life changing expeditions, but armchair travel via a book like this one can still provide plenty of insights. In Lands of Lost Borders Canadian cyclist Kate Harris has written a beautiful book about journeys, both external and internal. I've seen several reviewers compare this book to Cheryl Strayed's Wild and while not wanting to throw shade on Strayed's book, there is simply no comparison for me, other than that they are both about women who go off on a long journey and find themselves. Harris' book is far more contemplative and less self-consumed than Strayed's. She isn't spending time trying to figure out why she's a hot mess. She offers deep thoughts about exploration, the changing nature of scientific inquiry, and about the countries, people and borders of Central Asia. She and her travel partner Mel endure bitter cold, bureaucracy, isolation, yet are buoyed by the warmth and benevolence of people as they cycle through some of the remotest and most inhospitable corners of the world. Through it all, from Darwin to Sagan, Harris contemplates the explorers and scientists who have inspired her and who make her question what a true life of adventure and exploration really looks like. Though she began with yearning for Mars, Harris seems to have made her peace with adventure here on Earth.
The evolution of Harris' Silk Road experience is told both in this book and on her original blogging site, Cycling Silk. You can also find a short video of her journey with her friend Mel here. The cyclists were fortunate in the period of time during which they embarked on their Silk Road journey, as many of the regions have since undergone further political and internal struggles. Giving us a sense of the vastness and wonder of the journey itself, rather than her destination, from Istanbul, Turkey to Leh, Ladakh, Harris's account of her wanderlust is sure to become a classic in the genre of travel narratives.
I received a Digital Review Copy and a paper review copy, in exchange for an honest review.
Ugh, this book really spoke to me. I nearly cried at the end. What a way to look at the world. <3
I won this book in a giveaway. It is a beautifully written travel book and made me want to bike along the Silk Road. Kate Harris did an amazing job of describing her journey, the people she met, and the landscape along the Silk Road.
I loved that she emphasized what it means to her to explore and to be an explorer; just because others have travelled to a place does not mean it doesn’t have something new to teach you.
I loved that she emphasized what it means to her to explore and to be an explorer; just because others have travelled to a place does not mean it doesn’t have something new to teach you.
Thoroughly enjoyed Kate Harris' story of biking the Silk Road (along with her friend Mel) for the better part of a year. Her prose is just so good, I'd probably read anything she wrote on just about any topic.
Reading it definitely makes me want to travel and adventure more. Or perhaps more accurately, makes me want to be the sort of person who wants to travel and adventure more :P
Reading it definitely makes me want to travel and adventure more. Or perhaps more accurately, makes me want to be the sort of person who wants to travel and adventure more :P