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Beyond the Amu Darya lies that "crucible of mankind" as the author graphically terms the Central Asian region of Turkmen, Uzbek, Kazakh, Tajik and the Khirghiz. It is recounted in nineteenth century European travelogues as Transoxiana, or "beyond the Oxus". This is that wellspring of irresistible forces as the Middle Ages built an empire in our region, in a political-coalition that lasted for almost 500 years, with the other dominant force in North India - the Rajput kingdoms. Its rugged geography, environs forbid the ordinary backpacker from venturing in, as did its suffocating and paranoid bureaucracy during the lifetime of the Soviet Union. This is when Jaswant Singh, travelling without any diplomatic privilege or the trappings of officialdom, decided to pay his tribute to this land of legends, antiquity, that land, which, as he says, "altered the sense of my history". Travels in Transoxiana, brings back a wealth of observations that etch for us a picture of places whose ancient glory and present search for identity sit uncomfortably together. The engagement that results in such powerful detailing is historical, one, spanning centuries from the time of Chengez to the last decades of the twentieth century, but the traveller`s consciousness descends mere historical detailing. It narrates a personal sense of kinship, empathy and also loss, lending a grand and elegiac mood to descriptions of these Travels in Transoxiana. ISBN - 8129110024
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Pages : 164
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