Take a photo of a barcode or cover
A review by scarletohhara
Lands of Lost Borders: Out of Bounds on the Silk Road by Kate Harris
5.0
This book will go down as one of the best books I have read, of all times.
Through her words, Harris took me along with her on the Silk Road, sneaking into the Tibet, going through the bureaucratic processes in the 'stan' countries, riding in the high lands and the steppes - and through this amazing journey I took from my couch, Harris gave me enough backstories about a few real world problems and how they are affecting us.
Though I will never have the stamina, ability and willpower to undertake a trip of this size, and the ability to write so beautifully about it, seeing Harris' views on wildness vs wilderness (one being a type of place, another the state of mind), tourists claiming wanderlust towards the exotic and ignoring the everyday, that one can travel wildly anywhere should one want to, love for nature, mountains and the untouched, freedom, borders, her own privilege which opened up so many roads for her, a viewpoint where we seek risk on our travels whilst the natives go through them everyday etc made me feel on multiple occasions that it could be me writing these - I felt a strange sense of validation in Harris's writing, that most of my opinions are not exclusively mine in a gratifying way - I am glad it is in writing!
I think this love for the author, and hence her words and experiences started when I read her implicit views about Tibet and the Chinese oppression there as she refuses to enter Tibet legally; and then it only grew as she spoke about how borders are irrelevant in places like Siachen and yet there they are, soldiers guarding it night and day; continuing on to see her impeccable achievements in school, Oxford and MIT; the fact that she is a fellow Pacific North Westerner; her love for books, referring various authors and the sheer beauty of her words as she is giving you a glimpse into her emotions; the motivation to ride down the Silk Road, which is to see beyond the borders - a job she does really well through that one year.
I learnt a lot about the world as I read about Fanny Bullock Workman and her expedition to Siachen; the skirmish at Mt. Ararat (a place that I have always wanted to go because of the Noah mythology ) , the Turks and Armenians; the saints and rules and the rich civilization that came from the 'stans'; the life of Tibetans in Tibet vs in India; the concrete roads by the Black Sea and the ecology destruction there; caviar diplomacy and so many other nuggets of information which have made me more aware.
We need more such books to be written - books which talk about the joy of feeling free when one is going about the world; where travel is not glorified as THE ONLY THING that matters but that exploration is important to expand our horizons; where travel is not for Instagram but for the self; which intersperse, lest we forget, memoirs with travel experiences with local life - all said as a matter of fact, and not by taking sides.
Need I say more, I LOVED every single word in this book!
(And I was so glad to see it was blurb-endorsed by my other favorite author, Pico Iyer)
Through her words, Harris took me along with her on the Silk Road, sneaking into the Tibet, going through the bureaucratic processes in the 'stan' countries, riding in the high lands and the steppes - and through this amazing journey I took from my couch, Harris gave me enough backstories about a few real world problems and how they are affecting us.
Though I will never have the stamina, ability and willpower to undertake a trip of this size, and the ability to write so beautifully about it, seeing Harris' views on wildness vs wilderness (one being a type of place, another the state of mind), tourists claiming wanderlust towards the exotic and ignoring the everyday, that one can travel wildly anywhere should one want to, love for nature, mountains and the untouched, freedom, borders, her own privilege which opened up so many roads for her, a viewpoint where we seek risk on our travels whilst the natives go through them everyday etc made me feel on multiple occasions that it could be me writing these - I felt a strange sense of validation in Harris's writing, that most of my opinions are not exclusively mine in a gratifying way - I am glad it is in writing!
I think this love for the author, and hence her words and experiences started when I read her implicit views about Tibet and the Chinese oppression there as she refuses to enter Tibet legally; and then it only grew as she spoke about how borders are irrelevant in places like Siachen and yet there they are, soldiers guarding it night and day; continuing on to see her impeccable achievements in school, Oxford and MIT; the fact that she is a fellow Pacific North Westerner; her love for books, referring various authors and the sheer beauty of her words as she is giving you a glimpse into her emotions; the motivation to ride down the Silk Road, which is to see beyond the borders - a job she does really well through that one year.
I learnt a lot about the world as I read about Fanny Bullock Workman and her expedition to Siachen; the skirmish at Mt. Ararat (a place that I have always wanted to go because of the Noah mythology ) , the Turks and Armenians; the saints and rules and the rich civilization that came from the 'stans'; the life of Tibetans in Tibet vs in India; the concrete roads by the Black Sea and the ecology destruction there; caviar diplomacy and so many other nuggets of information which have made me more aware.
We need more such books to be written - books which talk about the joy of feeling free when one is going about the world; where travel is not glorified as THE ONLY THING that matters but that exploration is important to expand our horizons; where travel is not for Instagram but for the self; which intersperse, lest we forget, memoirs with travel experiences with local life - all said as a matter of fact, and not by taking sides.
Need I say more, I LOVED every single word in this book!
(And I was so glad to see it was blurb-endorsed by my other favorite author, Pico Iyer)