Product Description

The Silk Road is the fabled route that cuts through one of the most extraordinary tracts of land on this planet. A vast region separating China from the Mediterranean, it rates as one of the least hospitable on Earth – a succession of hostile deserts and towering mountain ranges, a harsh terrain of howling winds, searing heat and blistering cold.

No stranger to unforgiving territory, Nick Middleton follows in the footsteps of Alexander the Great and Marco Polo overland from China to Istanbul, surviving as they did the life-sapping Gobi desert, the icy passes of high altitude Tibet, and the great Steppes of Turkmenistan, and encounters those who eke out existences there today.

Nick's great gift as an adventure writer is to weave together the personal experience of ridiculous endurance - from sleeping on steaming rocks in the middle of a sub-zero desert to eating the most dubiously-cooked local delicacies - with the bigger picture of our planet and its peoples. (20050701)

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Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #407027 in Books
• Published on: 2006-05-08
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 304 pages

Review
'Middleton shares his passion for the terrain, the wildlife and the human interaction ... His visit to the man-made ecological disaster of the Aral Sea and its sinister island provokeshis most heartfelt arguments.' -- Waterstone's Books Quarterly 20050501 'Nick Middleton, part Oxford don, part Indiana Jones, enjoys travelling to extremes' -- Traveller magazine 20050501 'A generous handful of often hilarious and always self-deprecating anecdotes ... hugely gripping, sometimes moving, and bursting with a myriad of extraordinary and barely believable facts, Extremes Along the Silk Road is written proof of why we all wish Nick Middleton had been our geography teacher at school.' -- Global magazine 20050801 'He succeeds brilliantly ... Middleton has good stories to tell, and tells them very well.' -- Focus (Bristol) 20050701 'According to convention, explorers are tall, rugged, firm-jawed and taciturn. Think Captain Scott. Alternatively, they are ebullient and impossible to shut up, like Ray 'how to make dinner and a canoe out of three coconuts and some monkey dung' Mears. As an Oxford Don, explorer Nick Middleton is more a vague approximation of the Indiana Jones, academic adventurer type. He is 5ft 6in tall and wears specs, which are the bane of his life because they melt in the heat, snap in the cold or get eaten by insects! He is as surprised, wrong-footed or even disgusted as you or I would be when confronted by creepy-crawlies, mud or rotting seal. His travel books are wonderfully descriptive and evocative but they retain a strong tone of the Ordinary Joe; of Everyman discovering strange and amazing things and trying to have a laugh with the locals.' -- Daily Express 20050501 'An insightful and entertaining exploration of the relationships between people and nature. Middleton combines a traveller's passion with a geographer's knowledge and insight' -- Geographical Magazine 20050601 'This affable Oxford don has evolved his own brand of "extreme travel" ... one of the joys of reading Middleton is to see him confronting his phobias and fears ... credit must go to both author and publisher for creating something far more worthy than the average TV tie-in.' -- Wanderlust 20050601 'A magnificent insight into life in the extremes' -- Good Book Guide 20050701 'His travel books are wonderfully descriptive and evocative' -- Daily Express 20050501 'Each [essay] is an admirable work in its own right...an informative, enjoyable book' -- Adventure Travel Magazine 20060531 'An engaging insight into the lives of people who continue to survive in the harsh environments that make up this great historical trade route ... [The book] succeeds in portraying a far greater insight into the unforgiving territory he visits and sheer warmth of the people he meets ... crucially, he manages to maintain the right balance of personal experience' -- Birmingham Post 20050430 'Middleton has good stories to tell, and tells them very well' -- BBC Focus Magazine 20050701

Review
'An insightful and entertaining exploration of the relationships between people and nature. Middleton combines a traveller's passion with a geographer's knowledge and insight' (Geographical Magazine )

'This affable Oxford don has evolved his own brand of "extreme travel" . . . one of the joys of reading Middleton is to see him confronting his phobias and fears . . . credit must go to both author and publisher for creating something far more worthy than the average TV tie-in.' (Wanderlust )

'A magnificent insight into life in the extremes' (Good Book Guide )

'Wonderfully descriptive and evocative' (Daily Express )

‘Each [essay] is an admirable work in its own right. . . an informative, enjoyable book.’

(Adventure Travel Magazine )

'An engaging insight into the lives of people who continue to survive in the harsh environments that make up this great historical trade route . . . [The book] succeeds in portraying a far greater insight into the unforgiving territory he visits and sheer warmth of the people he meets . . . crucially, he manages to maintain the right balance of personal experience'

(Birmingham Post )

'Middleton has good stories to tell, and tells them very well'

(BBC Focus Magazine )

Literary Review
'The prose is kept forensically cool, the humour bone-dry'

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Customer Reviews

Smoke and mirrors
The write-up on Amazon promises much, but the book delivers very little in fact.The claims that are made are unfortunately not backed up by any conclusive evidence, the author speculates a great deal, and unfortunately he lets his Pro-ANC bias get the better of him.

Those not familiar with the realities of South Africa might find the book of interest,however as a South African I found 99% of it old hat

Travel writing at its very best
Extremes Along The Silk Road.

Dr Nick Middleton is an allegedly upper-middle-class, seemingly soft-living geographer who has travelled and explored more than 50 countries and published books (as a sole writer) going back as far as 1988.

However, "soft-living" is not a phrase that could be used to describe his exploits into the world's harshest - truly harshest - environments.

With an Extremely (pun intended) engaging personality which is more apparent in the Channel Four programmes he's made than in his writing - Nick scribes with a sense of humility and honesty, but beyond explaining his motivations for going to such extreme locales never alludes to any personal details - meaning his books reveal little behind the man, the preference being to concentrate on travel and the environments themselves. This makes for objective correspondence, but also provides an enigma to the man behind it - a point, perhaps, that makes his work so totally engrossing and leaves you wanting, or rather needing, more.

The style with which he writes is far more accessible than that of say Jack London or Henry David Thoreau (okay, so Nick is contemporary - there lyeth the answer - but even so, he could, but doesn't, add any pretence) without elaborate allegories, but is also infinitely more enchanting than a lot of the more modern day off-the-beaten-track travel writers.

As a younger end Thirty Something, I always prefer to see the more tenured traveller exploring and writing about this type of passage, and along with Michael Palin, Nick Middleton is now well and truly a favourite. Of the younger generation of travel writers, I think only Simon Reeve comes close.

All in all, Nick Middleton's books on Extremes are truly fascinating works of brilliance. I only wish he'd cover some of the more anthropogenic extremes like Bhopal, Chernobyl (which he has said is on his list, but which is - unfortunately - no longer off-the-beaten-path, being as it's now a tourist attraction) The Banqioa Dam, Goianas, etc, as he did with Voz Island (Rebirth Island) in this book.

Many thanks Nick, these books have been great companions. Congratulations on your first child.

Useful contribution to the literature on South Africa
This book is very readable and is an important contribution to South Africa's current affairs/recent history. Written by an outsider, it is unbiased and is good background reading for anyone new to the country. I recommend it for anyone that may need to interact with the political and economic landscape of the country.