Bradt Tea and Grit (Journey Books) (Travel Literature)
A Bicycle Journey along the Silk Road
Tea and Grit: a warm and evocative travel narrative relating the author’s 15,000-km cycle ride from Scotland to China in 2010. Crossing deserts, mountains, minefields and military zones in Syria, Turkey, Iran and Central Asia – all at a time when the CIA was tracking Osama bin Laden – this book celebrates the rich, poetic cultures of the Silk Road.
Size: 15 X 198 mm
Number of pages: 408
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Bradt Tea and Grit
A new travel memoir about a bicycle journey along the Silk Road.
About Tea and Grit
In 2010, while the US Government is hunting down Osama bin Laden in the Middle East, Helen Watson and her husband Ed set off on a cycling expedition from Glasgow to China.
Driven by a desire to understand the world beyond the media portrayal of George W. Bush’s ‘Axis of Evil’, the couple pedal 15,000 km along the Silk Road – ancient trade routes that were undergoing rapid modernisation.
Crossing deserts and mountains, minefields and military zones, they reach Muslim China via Syria, Turkey, Iran and Central Asia.
Plagued by sandstorms, overzealous officials and endless punctures, Helen and Ed camp with Bedouin, sleep in farmers’ houses, and are hosted by students and local dignitaries. They are waylaid with hundreds of cups of tea and interrogated about Western culture… and marriage.
Soon after the couple return home, the Arab Spring breaks, and the world Helen and Ed have visited is plunged into war and unrest.
Memories of the hospitality the pair received lead them to welcome refugees to Scotland through the UK’s first community sponsorship scheme – and to Helen writing about their adventure.
Tea and Grit: a Bicycle Journey along the Silk Road illuminates places rarely visited by Western travel writers. Through Helen’s evocative prose, visit Homs, the most embattled city of the Syrian War; Raqqa, the former capital of Islamic State; the Kurdish heartland of Eastern Turkey; the Islamic Republic of Iran; the secretive state of Turkmenistan; and Kashgar in Uyghur China.
Through Helen’s eyes, gain privileged glimpses into the lives of women in parts of the world characterised by the oppression of female liberties.
Join Helen and Ed as they forsake the white noise of everyday British life to focus on real decisions: where to sleep, what to eat, how to stay safe.
Rich in insight and compassion, Tea and Grit is a book about the rich and poetic cultures of the Silk Road, which have become imperilled by the aftermath of 9/11.
Above all, Tea and Grit is a book about why it is more important than ever before to drink tea with the people we fear as strangers.
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Contents
Prologue
1 Honoured Guests
PART 1: SYRIA
2 Your Crazy Choice
3 Three Men of Aleppo
4 Off the Map
5 Yelen, Daoud, Fantastico
6 Waterwheels and a Crusader’s Castle
7 The Desert, the Sown and the High Retreat
8 Blown Loose
9 Earthly and Heavenly Pleasures in Damascus
10 The Value of Water
11 The Children of Palmyra
12 To Raqqa
PART 2: EASTERN TURKEY
13 Eastwards
14 Bandit Country
15 Prepare to Fight
PART 3: IRAN
16 All that Downhill Wasted
17 Freedom to Ride
18 Tell them about the Real Iran
19 Meetings in Leopard Country
20 Money Laundering
21 Woman, Life, Freedom
PART 4: TURKMENISTAN
22 Turkmenitransit: across the Karakum Desert
UZBEKISTAN
23 Under the Shade of a Mulberry Tree
24 The Road to Samarkand
25 Stalin’s Map
26 Once bitten…
PART 5: TAJIKSTAN: THE PAMIRS
27 Pamir Preamble
28 Goodnight from Afghanistan
29 No Room at the Inn
30 Minefields in the Garden of Paradise
31 Praise Be for a Comfortable Bed
31 A Maze of Dashed Lines
33 Just Keep Pedalling
PART 6: THE LONG RETURN
34 Adrift West of East
35 The Moving Ground
36 Homecoming
Notes on the Chapter Epigraphs and their Authors
Selected Bibliography
Glossary
Thanks
About the author and updater
Born in Scotland and raised in Switzerland, Helen Watson (helenwatsontravelwriting.blogspot.com) is addicted to travel that is both physically and culturally challenging. In 2010, she cycled 15,000 km from Scotland to China, inspired by the hospitality of people along the Silk Road – and later dismayed by the subsequent refugee crisis following the Arab Spring. Watson has captured the experiences in her first book: Tea and Grit: a Bicycle Journey along the Silk Road. She has previously won travel-writing competitions in the Telegraph, twice been shortlisted for the Bradt Guides/Independent on Sunday New Travel Writer of the Year Award and contributed to Bradt’s Tajikistan guidebook. Living in the Scottish Highlands with her travel companion and husband, Ed, she works in wildlife conservation.