The best-selling adventurers of Eurasia is 20 years old!
In the great expanses of Eurasia, it was the horse that allowed man to appropriate the steppe. Also, when Priscilla and Sylvain, at 23 and 27 years old, decide to mark their steps in the dust of Central Asia, what other choice is offered to them than that of presenting themselves, in the saddle, reins in hand and foot in the stirrup? In six months of expedition, according to encounters, happiness and dangers, from China and Kyrgyzstan to the Aral Sea, the two French travel writers have collected over these 3000 km a bouquet of emotions, memories and reflections they offer us in this travel diary.
In their satchels, for all money, they carry only the stories of explorers who have succeeded in the region since the 14th century, from Marco Polo to Ella Maillart, and over the centuries combine their own viewpoint with that of these illustrious travel writers.
Following the ancient Silk Roads, with a stallion and two geldings, Priscilla Telmon and Sylvain Tesson, aged 23 and 27, faced, for 6 months, 3000 kilometers of steppes, mountains and desert: arid valleys of Tajikistan , oases of Samarkand and Bukhara, red sands of Uzbekistan, marshes of Karakalpakia.
A cavalcade that is not easy. you have to escape horse thieves, brace yourself when a storm surprises you at four thousand meters above sea level, pull a drowning horse out of the marsh, slip through the cracks of an Islamic guerrilla, unearth the mountain pastures every day or tasty fodder for their companions, and negotiate at the borders with sometimes rather stubborn officials.
They have good guides, fortunately: the stories of great travellers, like Guillaume de Rubrouck or Ella Maillart – who in their time suffered the same insults -, and luckily all these cavalier peoples, descendants of the hordes who behind Genghis Khan made them tremble the steppe, are marvelous in their hospitality. even if they force-feed you fermented milk with vodka. and even if under all the yurts of wool and in all the houses of earth one misses the good old days of Brezhnev!
20 years ago, this intimate collection, translated into German, there was also a film, made lovers of Central Asia dream by offering the flavor of the moment, the taste of khumus drunk under the yurt, the harmony between horses, the song of the great steppes, the upheavals of a people…
We did not yet know that China was going to relaunch the great adventure of the mythical route from China to Europe with the famous “Belt and Road Initiative”.
