Turkestan Solo: A Journey through Central Asia »

Ella Maillart was one of the outstanding travelers of the 20th century. A successful athlete, writer and passionate photographer, she travelled widely throughout Europe, Russia, Central Asia, the Middle East, India and Nepal until her death in 1997. Dervla Murphy, the celebrated travel writer, is the author of Where the Indus is Young, South from the Limpopo, Eight Feet in the Andes, The Waiting Land and Through the Embers of Chaos.

In 1932, long before traveling in Central Asia became fashionable, Ella Maillart travelled to Russian Turkestan, bordered by China, Tibet, Pakistan, and Afghanistan. Setting out from Moscow, she crossed Kyrgyzstan as far as the Tien Shan range (the Celestial Mountains). She climbed the 5,000 metre-high Sari Tor on makeshift skis, explored the legendary cities of Tashkent, Samarkand, Khiva and Bukhara, and crossed, solo, the freezing and hostile wastes of the Kizil Kum, the Desert of Red Sands.

Part I: Lets and Hindrances

• A Last Throw

• Six Days on Board

• Frunze

• Tokmak

• Along the Iron Way

• Kara Kol

• On to the Syrt

• The First Aul

• To the Source of the Iaxartes

• Ak Bel, or the Desolate Valleys

• Isolated Lives

• Exploring "The White Bull"

• Three New Passes

• Last Days in Kirghizia

• Part II: Alone

• Tashkent

• Pravda Vostoka

• A Visit to an Anarchist Exile

• The Answers of an Oriental President

• Up in the Clouds

• Samarkand the Incomparable

• The Present

• Yann Tells a Story

• The Trial of the Bassmatchi

• Bokhara the Fallen

• Towards the Amu Daria

• The Pelican's Store-Room

• Turt Köl

• Khiva

• The Germans of Ak Metchet

• A Race with the Ice

• Towards the Unknown North

• Three Hundred Miles Through the 'Desert of Red Sands'

• Bibliography

• Index