Night Train to Turkistan

This is an account of a journey along the Chinese-Afghanistan border - the ancient silk route - retracing the 1934 journey described by classic travel-writer Peter Fleming in "News from Tartary". Chinese Turkistan, or Tartary, is one of the most remote and least populated areas on earth, a place of physical extremes, containing both the world's highest point, Mount Everest, and its second lowest, the Turfan depression. In between, lurks the dreaded Takla Makan desert, a 125,000 square-mile expanse of desolation with temperatures that average over 110 degrees in summer and 5 below in winter - when Stevens undertook his journey. For weeks he and his companions - two men and a woman - rarely removed their gloves or coats, even to eat or sleep. They travelled by train, bus, donkey cart, truck and bicycle, beset by obstacles both physical and political at virtually every stage of the journey.