7,000 Miles - A Story Of a Young Mans Travels on the Silk Route

Essay by lamustaHigh School, 10th gradeA, January 2004

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7,000 Miles

'Route: the way taken to get from place to place', a grey tedious word. The action

of moving from place to place has no story, but is a physical act. Yet just as a person may

have a life beyond the word 'living', a word may have meaning beyond the dictionary; a word represents a different story to each person, and the word 'route', represents not the story of a route, but the story of my journey upon the silk route.

'There is substance between marks plotted upon a map, there is a journey, and there is life'.

Seven thousand miles of history and seven thousand miles of trade and adventure ran among numerous cities spread across three continents, the route being not one, but many. If you were lucky, you would have a camel, if not, you walked. When we may complain about a traffic jam, the people of the route faced the danger of being attacked by bandits in Transoxiana, the land of no rules; or dying under the extreme heat of Taklamakam, one of the driest deserts in the world, its Turkish name meaning "if you go in, you won't come out".

Yet this route of many faces made its mark in history positive, creating a link between Western lands and cultures, and the East.

China's resources are prized in western countries, especially silk. "China donated much knowledge along the silk route: paper, gunpowder, printing and civilisation; and in return for these treasures, the Chinese received objects that it desired along the route, the finest Tashkent horse for the emperors, the finest of each craft from the town known for making it the best. This was the way of the route, the west and east being linked by the path, a network of caravan tracks...