Boredom on the Silk Road

It's too bad, maybe, that Shadow of the Silk Road is the first book by Colin Thubron, the noted travel writer, that I've read. I assume his reputation came from much better books -- maybe the title is a clue that this is the shadow of his former writing skill. Anyway, I find the book very boring. Every hotel is seedy, cold, and run down. Transportation is rickety. Drivers are reckless. Distances are vast.

"My bus winds up into the land of carved dust. The hills circle and uncoil around us..." (p. 58)

"For hundreds of miles my bus crossed a wind-torn wilderness, its surface glazed with pulverised stone...Somewhere in the desert's core a storm was raging..." (p. 113)

"My bus moved through a country of lush calm, under a sky dissolved in haze... Its roof was pitted with holes for air and lights now gone, shaking above the passengers' heads." [I checked and re-checked that last sentence -- yes, it's very hard to parse!] (p. 188)

I feel like I read these words over and over.

All the locals he meets ask him to write about them. They all have long, sad stories about how bad things were under the Soviets or Chinese and how disappointed they are that the new regime/new century/whatever hasn't improved their lives. Some of them he met when writing earlier books. Were they more interesting the first time around?

It gets harder and harder, as the book goes on, to distinguish between one ancient glory and another. The Mongols. Tamarlane. Genghis Khan. Greeks and Romans. Ruins from other eras -- with eerie beauty, predictably. Ethnic variety among travelers who don't go there any more. Over and over.

Risky border crossings. Ragged beggars. Ambitious young people. Spiritual or cynical or manipulative religious leaders (Imams, Russian Orthodox priests, whatever.) Discouraged, disillusioned older people. Abandoned hopes. Terrible exotic food. Appalling dangerous hotels. Over and over.

Enough said: I can't find enough difference between one place and another along the very long, dangerous string of backwaters. It seems less and less relevant that this silk route was once a major trading artery and now is so isolated. Is it his fault or just the material? I don't know. Maybe it's my fault. I wish I had tried the library instead of buying this new book.