A Carpet Ride to Khiva: Seven Years on the Silk Road
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A Carpet Ride to Khiva: Seven Years on the Silk Road Details
The Silk Road conjures images of the exotic and the unknown. Most travellers simply pass along it. Brit Chris Alexander chose to live there. Ostensibly writing a guidebook, Alexander found life at the heart of the glittering madrassahs, mosques and minarets of the walled city of Khiva - a remote desert oasis in Uzbekistan - immensely alluring, and stayed. Immersing himself in the language and rich cultural traditions Alexander discovers a world torn between Marx and Mohammed - a place where veils and vodka, pork and polygamy freely mingle - against a backdrop of forgotten carpet designs, crumbling but magnificent Islamic architecture and scenes drawn straight from "The Arabian Nights". Accompanied by a large green parrot, a ginger cat and his adoptive Uzbek family, Alexander recounts his efforts to rediscover the lost art of traditional weaving and dyeing, and the process establishing a self-sufficient carpet workshop, employing local women and disabled people to train as apprentices. "A Carpet Ride to Khiva" sees Alexander being stripped naked at a former Soviet youth camp, crawling through silkworm droppings in an attempt to record their life-cycle, holed up in the British Museum discovering carpet designs dormant for half a millennia, tackling a carpet-thieving mayor, distinguishing natural dyes from sacks of opium in Northern Afghanistan, bluffing his way through an impromptu version of "My Heart Will Go On" for national Uzbek TV and seeking sanctuary as an anti-Western riot consumed the Kabul carpet bazaar. It is an unforgettable true travel story of a journey to the heart of the unknown and the unexpected friendship one man found there.
Reviews
This is the non-fiction story of a British man named Chris Alexander. He traveled to Khiva to write a guidebook and ended up being mesmerised by the area and staying. He become facinated by the ancient Silk Road, and ended up opening a shop to weave intricate carpets that were native to the area. The story is his journey of living as a foreigner in this part of the world - how he fell in love with the people, the struggles he had living there (and what he saw around him - like frequent power outages and constant bribes to get things done), and finally the heartbreak when he had to leave.This story was incredible. First - the book is very well written. Non-fiction for me can go only two ways - extremely interesting, or extremely dull. I hardly ever find just a middle of the road book. This one, thankfully was extremely interesting and I found myself reading late into the night just to finish the book. The stories he shared, and the situations he witnessed will draw you in. I am always impressed with people like Chris - who takes a leap like the one he did in a country that can be tricky for expats. Yes - we moved to Switzerland as expats, but this is Uzbekistan. Totally different ballgame.You will love this book. I learned an incredible amount about a country I knew nothing about. Please take a chance to read this book. You will not be disappointed.