A Taste of the Silk Road: Dunhuang

A Taste of the Silk Road: A Personal Journey 

During its heydays, when the Tang Dynasty ruled China, the Silk Road was an inhospitable and utterly dangerous place. It nearly cost the most famous pilgrim to travel the road, the 7th century Chinese Monk Xuanzang, his life. Sadly, despite the dramatic improvements in transport and communications, many parts of it are still difficult and unstable. There is Uyghur unrest in China’s Xinjiang province, the site of such major Silk Road stopovers as Hami and Turpan on the north and Khotan (Zeitan) in the south. Taliban menaces the old Silk Road route to India via Afghanistan and Pakistan (Swat Valley). Add Iran, Baghdad, and the Central Asian Republics, and you get the picture. READ MORE http://aasilkroad.blogspot.com/