Tea Horse Road
Posted on Saturday, July 3rd, 2010 at 7:53 am
silk road travel, what are Silk road countries, travel tips and advices for silk road ountries
The Silk Road was used from about the 2nd to the 13th century. Silk, porcelain, laquer ware, paper, tea, spices, gems and perfumes were brought to the West. Stuff going to the East: Gold, silver, ivory, jade and other stones, wool, horses, glass, fruit and even acrobats and ostriches. The Silk Road never was a single track, but a network of caravan tracks that changed with wars, earthquakes, dry or wet periods. The Western end lied somewhere around Aleppo at the Mediterranean Sea, and the Eastern end around Luoyang in China, south of Beijing. In the middle lay the countries of Central Asia, which until 1991 were part of the U.S.S.R.: Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan.
We travelled a few weeks through these countries and through a small part of China. We enjoyed our time here, partly because of the beautiful things that can be seen. And partly because the people we met were very nice and gave us the feeling we were welcome. Of course, in 4 weeks you can only see a glimpse of these countries. Especially in Turkmenistan and Kazakhstan we’ve only been a very short time. Perhaps we can come back here someday to see more .
Overland routes of Silk roads
As it extends westwards from the ancient commercial centers of China, the overland, intercontinental Silk Road divides into the northern and southern routes bypassing the Taklamakan Desert and Lop Nur.
The northern route started at Chang’an (now called Xi’an), the capital of the ancient Chinese Kingdom, which, in the Later Han, was moved further east to Luoyang. The route was defined about the 1st Century BCE as Han Wudi put an end to harassment by nomadic tribes.[citation needed]
The route travels northwest through the Chinese province of Gansu from Shaanxi Province, and splits into three further routes, two of them following the mountain ranges to the north and south of the Taklimakan Desert to rejoin at Kashgar; and the other going north of the Tian Shan mountains through Turpan, Talgar and Almaty (in what is now southeast Kazakhstan). The routes split west of Kashgar with one branch heading down the Alai Valley towards Termez and Balkh, while the other traveled through Kokand in the Fergana Valley, and then west across the Karakum Desert towards Merv, joining the southern route briefly.
One of the branch routes turned northwest to the north of the Aral and Caspian seas then and on to the Black Sea. Yet another route started at Xi’an, passed through the Western corridor beyond the Yellow Rivers, Xinjiang, Fergana (in present-day eastern Uzbekistan), Persia and Iraq before joining the western boundary of the Roman Empire. A route for caravans, the northern Silk Road brought to China many goods such as “dates, saffron powder and pistachio nuts from Persia; frankincense, aloes and myrrh from Somalia; sandalwood from India; glass bottles from Egypt, and other expensive and desirable goods from other parts of the world.” In exchange, the caravans sent back bolts of silk brocade, lacquer ware and porcelain.
The southern route is mainly a single route running from China, through Karakoram. Here it is nowadays the international paved road connecting Pakistan and China as the Karakoram Highway. It then continues to Turkestan–Khorasan region, Mesopotamia, and into Anatolia, with southward spurs enabling the journey to be completed by sea from various points. It starts out southwards in China. Crossing the high mountains, then it passes through northern Pakistan, over the Hindu Kush mountains, and into Afghanistan, rejoining the northern route briefly near Merv. From there it follows a nearly straight line west through mountainous northern Iran and the northern tip of the Syrian Desert to the Levant, where Mediterranean trading ships plied regular routes to Italy, and land routes went either north through Anatolia or south to North Africa. Another branch road traveled from Herat through Susa to Charax Spasinu at the head of the Persian Gulf and across to Petra and on to Alexandria and other eastern Mediterranean ports from where ships carried the cargoes to Rome
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