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Acclaimed journalist Bernard Ollivier continues his epic journey across Persia and Central Asia as he walks the length of the Silk Road. The Road to Samarkand is journalist Bernard Ollivier’s stunning, true-to-life account of the second part of his 7,200-mile walk from Istanbul to Xi’an, China along the Silk Road–the longest and perhaps most mythical trade route of all time. Picking up where Out of Istanbul left off, Ollivier heads out of the Middle East and into Central Asia, grappling not only with his own will to continue but with new, unforeseen dangers. After crossing the final mountain passes of Kurdistan, Ollivier sets foot in Iran, keeping an eye out for vestiges of the mythical silk trade as he passes through many of modern-day Persia’s cities and villages, including Tabriz, Tehran, Nishapur, and the holy city of Mashhad. After the harrowing roads and robber-cops of the cities, deserts now lie in his path: first Iran’s Great Salt Desert, then Turkmenistan’s forbidding Karakum, whose relentless sun, snakes, and scorpions pose continuous challenges to Ollivier’s goal of reaching Uzbekistan. Setting his own fears aside, he travels on, wonderstruck wherever he looks, borne by a childhood dream: to see for himself the golden domes and turquoise sky of Samarkand, one of Central Asia’s most ancient cities. But what Ollivier enjoys most are the people he meets along the way: Askar, the hospitable gardener; the pilgrims of Mashhad; and his knights in shining armor, Mehdi and Monir. From the authoritarian mullahs of revolutionary Iran to the warm welcome he receives from average Iranians—custodians of age-old, cordial Persian culture; from the stark realities of former Soviet republics to the region’s legendary bazaars, veritable feasts for the senses, readers discover, through Ollivier’s keen journalistic eyes, the rich history and contemporary culture of these amazing lands.