Customer Reviews

Following Marco Polo's Silk Road: An Enthralling Story of Travels Through Turkey, Syria, Jordan, Iran, Pakistan, India, China and Uzbekistan

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Lawrenson has employed a keen eye and his obvious love for the world's peoples to tell a true story from a lifetime of travels. The author does a fine job of synthesizing and organizing a great deal of information without sensationalizing, and he is not at all condescending. For a self-published labor of love it is very clean and highly readable.

I am ambivalent about the quality of the read itself, perhaps just for stylistic reasons. To me the book has an undesirable "slideshow effect". It is as though he showed one of his thousands of photographs at a time and then gave a few sentences of description and context to each before moving on to the next image. I hoped for broader images and more depth.

For example, on page 373, "He was also an expert in both throat singing and in calligraphy. He called a neighbor over to join him in a rendition of the former art and we all agreed afterwards that it was indeed a remarkable performance." No further description and no indication of the exact quality of the singing that impressed him is given.

Another example follows a few pages later while he is describing an art museum in Uzbekistan, "The collection was absolutely stunning. It was the best collection of art that I have ever seen- and I've seen the art in many of the collections in the world. This view was shared by a number of our group." No specific pieces of art are described, but how the museum came into being is. I hoped to be transported into the gallery and to stare with him at a specific work or two and to learn exactly the way this experience moved him but he was moving on to the next slide already.

I look for more impression and more intimacy in a book so that the imagination might have room to expand. The author's gift, however is other. If one disagrees with my reasons, I think this could be a thoroughly enjoyable read for what the author is quite good at: a whirlwind of factual bits succinctly and humanely organized for discovery's sake.

This book recounts the adventures of Brian and Jill Lawrenson as they visit cities along the Silk Road. They have both luck and pluck as they avoid the bombs in Iran at the time of the Iran Iraq war, and travel through warlord territory of Afghanistan. They fly out of airports where they have to shovel the snow from the runway with pieces of tin and cross rivers in vehicles where the water comes through the floor. Border crossings are their own special moments where they face intimidation and waiting games.

Brian keeps an even tone whether he's watching 16 year olds build bullets in weapons factories or monks in prayer in monasteries or whether he and Jill carry their luggage up a precariously steep mountain because the road has been washed out. They visit Uzbekistan where it is casually mentioned that Osama bin Laden casually visits.

This is a very pleasant book to read. In fact, I'm passing it on to a friend who is immensely curious about the China parts. I know he will enjoy the whole book.

This is a self published volume, and a 5 star within its type. The maps are right where you need them and there is an even quality to the prose. I'm giving it a 4 because this is Amazon where it competes with the big guys. Better production (type, layout, photos or graphics, binding) and editing (it crosses from a guidebook to a narrative with slivers of history). A good editor could bring this to a 5 for any armchair traveler.

Vibrant and alive with wonder at the potpourri of magical places and interesting cultures which make up our beautiful world, Brian Lawrenson's account of his travels along Marco Polo's route is a breezy and fun way to vacation from your balcony. By train, camel, and tricycle we are along for the ride as he and his wife Jill find history and adventure from Istanbul to Kathmandu, Damascus to Samarkand, from China to Pakistan. Written in an intimate style, we experience everything along with them, making for a relaxed holiday devoid of the hassles and overflowing with the pleasures. Speculation about Marco Polo and his journey and the colorful history of each place visited and enjoyed are given the reader in an atmosphere as easy as the cafes where plans for the next day were often hatched.

Colorful groups and experienced guides often join in the journey, but mostly it is that sense of excitement at being there which captures the reader. We can see in our mind's eye the sultans and belly dancers when visiting the Pela Palas in Istanbul, and experience a romantic gondola ride along a Venetian canal while discovering the interesting history of the gondoliers. Whether it is the Valley of Tombs or a spot where Lawrence of Arabia once stood matters only slightly, as it is only one tiny adventure among many we get to share with the Lawrensons. In China we can hear the hoofbeats of riders as we gaze upon the Terra Cotta Warriors of ancient times, and in Syria we learn of Queen Zenobia, who once challenged and defied the Roman Empire. Young Syrian girls still wear copies of a coin she had minted with her image as a necklace.

It was fascinating to discover great beauty in places like Pakistan, which is not the first image which comes to the mind of a westerner. Ali and Azeem guided the Lawrensons safely across narrow paths barely roads at all, through a vibrant country still strangely full of British traditions. Exotic foods were sampled and enjoyed at eateries throughout the journey, and it feels as if we are there enjoying them as well. There is a sense of good fortune also; a bomb exploding in a marketplace the couple had just left. From Trieste and the Croation countryside to the making of tea in China it is all enjoyable and fascinating. Americans who enjoy Globe Trekker on PBS will find that same bright sense of enchantment in traveling to these exotic places with the Lawrensons as our guides.

Being American by birth and good fortune, and now living in lovely Australia after marrying there, I found myself wondering whether the shadow we know exists in our day in certain regions of the world would ever find their way in to this breezy travel adventure so full of wonder and history for these places along Polo's journey. A comment offered by a border guard and a quiet conversation Lawrenson had with another man brought me briefly back to earth from the heady journey I'd been on with he and his wife, Jill. Sympathy for anti-American leanings and the fanatical hate of a world criminal booted out of many countries already was palpable, but by no means representative of the majority. It only served to highlight the guilt by association for those who look the other way at evil as it freely and openly walks back and forth across their borders. No doubt those same two people, if they saw a man stab violently another outside their window, would never consider allowing him to move freely in and out of the comfort of their family home. Morality, decency, and a sense of right and wrong inherent in the vast majority of human beings would not allow for such.

It was a brief jolt, coming near the end of the author's journey, only serving to foster in the reader an appreciation for their own beauteous patch of freedom. Perhaps the finest comment I can make about this work is that it doesn't necessarily foster that feeling of regret we sometimes get from travel books. Due in large part to its intimate style and true wonderment which can be felt by the reader, we close this book with the impression of having been these places ourselves. As the couple approach Sydney, we too are grateful for our own spot to rest, yet left wondering how much more there is to experience in our third rock from the sun if we could only manage to do so. In the end, this is an enjoyable and uplifting account of travel I can honestly recommend to anyone who enjoys them.

Before reading "Marco Polo's Silk Road" last year I had read Colin Thubron's "Shadow of the Silk Road." I have the highest regard for Thubron as a very gifted and descriptive writer. For example when he writes: "A distant disturbance at one end of the road trembled along its length like an electric current....in a relentless chain reaction...." Images of a war in China effecting trade in ancient Rome flash through one's mind in hundreds of suggestive images. Brian Lawrenson has more difficult writing footsteps to follow than Marco Polo's. I could not help comparing the two author's writing approaches. However, I finished reading this book very much impressed by Lawrenson's patient historical fact-finding and weaving in and out of cultures between then and now. Thubron also did this, but in quite disimilar ways.

Lawrenson noted the changes in travel, and changes in himself that age brings, from his first steps over 30 years ago to the culmination of his journey in modern times, when a warm clean hotel room is now available, and indeed preferred over cold nights on damp mountain dirt. But it does not diminish the experiences of new discoveries.

Lawrenson wrote; " The name Karakorum "Highway" is a misnomer. It is thousands of meters of rutted, washed away, washed over, dirt track that connects a meter or so of tarmac, or metal road as they say here. In places it is narrow, sometimes only the width of a single vehicle. We spent a lot of time holding our breadth..."

That's the kind of imagery I loved about this book because those are the very real experiences that still linger in my memory and in my heart. This has been a book of excellent writing. Excellent reading.

FOLLOWING MARCO POLO'S SILK ROAD by Brian Lawrenson is a fast-paced travel essay recounting several trips by the author and his wife Jill to the areas of the Middle and Far East described by the 13th century Venetian merchant, Marco Polo, who himself spent 24 years on the road before writing-up his travelogue, Il Milione di Marco Polo, with co-author Rustichello da Pisa.

Lawrenson's companionable account is discontinuous in both time and space. The first two-thirds records the 1986 passage the couple made going west to east from Venice to Lukla, Nepal via Turkey, Syria, Jordan, Iran, Pakistan, India and Tibet with a sidebar solo re-visit of Syria and Jordan by Brian in 2007. The last third begins with the pair arriving in Beijing in 2007, and from there traversing China's far western reaches, then south to Islamabad, Pakistan, with another sidebar, the couple's 2005 exploration of Uzbekistan.

The word "following" in the volume's title is perhaps benignly disingenuous. At best, what is presumed to have been Marco Polo's course is intersected by the Lawrensons' path at several points but not strictly followed. However, no matter. The author's descriptive powers serve the reader well and more than make up for any elastic subjectivity regarding the route.

Brian occasionally refers to the keeping of a daily diary, which apparently served as the basis for the narrative reconstruction; the book has that pace, i.e. a testimony of sequential arrivals and departures with local sights briefly touched upon in between. FOLLOWING MARCO POLO'S SILK ROAD is perhaps at its best when the author takes the time to slow down and smell the flowers, so to speak, such as when sharing the wonders of the Terracotta Warriors at Xian, or the difficulties flying out of the Lukla airport, or the camel ride out of Wadi Rum. Sporadically, I was slightly irritated that Lawrenson didn't display more of a journalistic approach to his experiences, such as when he writes (in Kashgar):

"We had a lazy day on Saturday and took a taxi over to John's Café for a late lunch. This chain of four cafes is found along the Silk Road. The restaurant was quiet and this gave us the opportunity to meet and talk to the founder, Mr. John. His first café was opened in 1986 and they offer not only food but a range of tourist services including cycle hire. Mr. John is quite a legend with the backpacker community."

Now, I'm fairly certain there's an interesting back story about Mr. John and his café chain if someone would take the time to tell it.

The Lawrensons are apparently avid travel photographers, as frequent mention is made in the text of taking snaps. Indeed, the five color photographs on the back of the book's cover are visually arresting. Most unfortunately, the volume contains no others. In fairness, the author does state that all film exposed during their 1986 trek was lost enroute. But, how about 2005 and 2007 in the digital age? However, it would be unfair to deduct too much when the norm of most travel memoirs is to preclude any photo section whatsoever. I suspect is has something to do with publishing costs.

FOLLOWING MARCO POLO'S SILK ROAD does include twelve adequately useful but very small-scale maps.

One conclusion I reached with certainty is that Brian is a very lucky man to have his wife Jill as his traveling companion. Some couples start squabbling on a 3-day weekend out of town, but the Lawrensons have managed to congenially travel the globe for decades, apparently. The two could probably write an entire book on the subject of getting along while under stress in faraway places. (One of the pair is probably a saint to put up with the other's foibles.) I wish Jill had been given more exposure in the narrative here.

For me, the ultimately successful travel essay causes me to want to sell all my possessions in order to wander to someplace I've never been, or, conversely, to make me determined to avoid a place at all costs. I can't truthfully say that FOLLOWING MARCO POLO'S SILK ROAD inspired me to either. Rather, the author's experiences acquired over so long a distance and shared in so relatively short a book left me thankful that I was able to grasp a corner of Brian's swiftly flying carpet and take at face value what he offered, which was, more oft than not, very good armchair entertainment.

This is a travel book of the "Rick Steves" genre. It tells of the author's nostalgic travels about Asia.
To start with my description I will notice a "negative" virtue but one too seldom found. It is not an ax-grinder. It has little complaining or advocating and almost no contrived historical allegory. The past is loved in all the grandeur and romance that adheres to distant time the way beauty adheres to a mountain far away. And it is loved for itself, not for it's "lessons". Related to this is the book's cheerfulness, amiablity and love of life. Love of sights, of food, and of people.
The author describes as much his travels in his mind as his physical travels and as always the human mind can go farther. He gives anecdotes and folktales of all sorts from the places he visits. Not just Marco Polo tales by the way, but a splendid variety from all about the places he travels. The "mind travels" are really the most interesting parts. Naturally, not many today can travel to the end of the world and return with riches the way Marco did; somehow airplanes take the romance out of the idea(probably Marco, practical Venetian that he was, would have preferred to go by plane but that is another story). But one can always dream and one can always share another's dream.
Those that wish to travel far away can follow Brian Lawrenson's travels both physically and imaginatively and find it worth the trip.

First, I have to admit to being a complete travel book junkie. My wife and I, having done our share of traveling and trekking in our many years, are always interested in the experiences, adventures and observations of others. I will also admit that when I first scanned this work I did have some reservations as Brian Lawrenson has taken a somewhat different approach in that this journey he and his wife took spanned a twenty five year period. I had grave doubts. Fortunately I pushed on and found this to be an absolutely delightful read and the author actually made the documentation of the split journey work; and I must say work quite well! It fit seamlessly and actually enhanced their story in many ways.

The Lawrensons started their travels; roughly following some of the routes which have been documented in the travels of Marco Polo, and other travelers of the Silk Road throughout history, in the city of Venice and from there proceeded to Istanbul, Turkey by train where they began their adventuresome odyssey. It was at this point that I was completely hooked and it was at this point that all of the future observations and comments of the author were validated for me. My wife and I lived in and near Istanbul for a number of years; traveled extensively throughout the country of Turkey during that time; and literally lived with the Turkish people. The author completely nailed the essence of the country perfectly. His descriptions were completely accurate and he even got his history correct! I figured if he got this portion right, then the rest of the book must be just as good...it was!

Brian Lawrenson is obviously one of those individuals with a keen sense of observation and certainly is able to articulate those observations in an informative and accurate manner. I might state right now, that his description of the food in the different countries and lands they traveled through is worth the price of the book alone! Not only am I a travel book junkie, I am also a food junkie and the more exotic and different the food, the better I like it. His descriptions of Turkish vegetable and meat dishes were as good as his descriptions of famous landmarks. The author had me drooling on the pages chapter after chapter.

As this couple traveled through various countries, Turkey, Syria, Iran, India, Pakistan, Uzbekistan, China and Tibet, just to name a few, the observations of the peoples and cultures flow from the author's pen. Always rather nonjudgmental, something I appreciated, the author never the less was able to convey his general love off people; all people, and he and his wife's love of travel. We also get little mini history lessons as this couple go from country to country, city to city and between. Granted, these are small survey type lessons, but they are of the type that should stimulate the reader to search out and read works that cover the subject at a greater depth. I consider these little facts thrown in here and there as "learning seeds," and always hope they will grow within the reader leading them to further study and reading.

Now I do not recommend this be used as a travel guide for the current adventurer; after all, some of this trip took place over twenty years ago and the political climate in this part of the word has changed greatly, some for the better, some for the worse. So have travel conditions. I know that in our travels in Turkey and Iran, which took place at least fifteen years before the authors, where much different than the Lawrensons' were and things have even changed even more since that time. Never the less, it is interesting to compare then to now and I actually loved this aspect of the work.

For a good, mellow and entertaining read, a read that will actually enlighten you and increase your knowledge, this is certainly one you should pick up and add to your library. I understand that the author and his wife have taken other extended trips to other parts of the world and it would certainly be nice if we had an account of those also.

The author has been kind enough to give us a very nice reading list at the end of the book for those who want to learn more of this fascinating area of the world.

Recommend this one highly.

Don Blankenship
The Ozarks

Brian Lawrenson takes readers on a journey on one of the most legendary roads in world history, the Silk Road. He interconnects his personal accounts with history, geography, culture, and travel to this vast landscape that covers the most enchanting and controversial parts of the world that the road covered from parts of the near East and far East. FOLLOWING MARCO POLO'S SILK ROAD is a unique book because it is an up-close coverage of Brian and Jill Lawrenson's experience and the people and places they encounter along the way.

Indeed, the book is a travel log of the Lawrenson's excursion that took over twenty-five years to record. But it is more than that. Lawrenson provides great detail in his accounts, especially his observations in various settings that involve the culture of the people he associated with as well as befriended on his travels, and how those experiences drew parallels to what Marco Polo may have experienced; he literally ate, slept, conversed, and shared traditional rituals in the different communities. This is exemplified with the narrative, which intermingles the rich history of these regions and Lawrenson's present day accounts that occurred in Tibet, India, China, and parts of the Middle East.

FOLLOWING MARCO POLO'S SILK ROAD will delight travel readers as well as history buffs. The reading list was interesting, but I would have liked to see a bibliography list as well. But for a self-published book, this is an insightful and impressive read that will be shared with others who would like to understand the significance of Marco Polo and Brian Lawrenson's journey back to one of the oldest roads in history.

Think Christopher Columbus meets the Da Vinci Code. Mr. Lawrenson's travels will have you raising eyebrows, shaking your head and wanting to call him up and give him a huge hug all at the same time! This life-traveler brings you stories so real, that you will feel as if you are trekking across the Silk Road yourself. A can't put down read, this award-winning philanthropist will have you both crying and laughing out loud. You'd never guess that this adventurous historian spent the bulk of his life in sales, marketing and computer tech. Step aside, Rick Steves - there's a new game in town and his name is Brian Lawrenson! 5 stars!