Journeys on the Silk Road (2 page)

Water was fetched so he could scrub away the sweat and grime etched into his skin. Only then did he present himself in the dining room. He eased into a chair, glad at last to sit on something other than his exhausted horse, and talked with his friends until well past midnight. At the dining table were Britain’s representative in Kashgar, George Macartney, and his wife, Catherine Theodora, both eager to hear of Stein’s journey so far and, equally important, his hopes for the trip ahead. The last time they had been together in Chini Bagh, in 1901, the explorer was at the end of his first expedition to Turkestan. He had been loaded with ancient treasures recovered from the desert, treasures that would stun scholars across Europe. Now he had returned, better equipped, better funded and better educated about the obstacles that lay ahead. George Macartney had been invaluable then, helping Stein assemble the crew that would pluck antiquities from beneath the sands. This time, the stakes were higher, the journey longer and the route more deadly.

As they talked into the night of June 8, 1906, Stein had much to tell of the two-month trip that had brought him to Chini Bagh’s welcoming doorstep. His weather-beaten face had barely recovered from his trip over the mountains that separated Chinese Turkestan from northern India. The high-altitude sun left his face so blistered and swollen he had wondered if his friends would recognize him. But sunburn was the least of the hardships he encountered.

His journey had begun on April 2, when he set out from northern India on a cold but sunny day. Spring had not yet greened the native chinar trees, nor had the irises sprouted as Stein left the alpine Kashmir Valley with a fox terrier named Dash at his heels. His intended route, at times following the footsteps of Alexander the Great, led up through the far north of present-day Pakistan, through lawless tribal territory, and briefly across Afghan terrain before descending to Turkestan. He knew robbery—or worse—was a risk and that at least one foreign explorer had been beheaded in the region, so he was armed with Lee-Enfield carbines and Webley revolvers. His path led over “the roof of the world,” the Pamir Mountains whose jagged peaks are some of the highest on earth. The route was the quickest way to Kashgar, and he had every reason to hurry.

But the course was treacherous in the spring, as the arrival of Stein’s faithful old caravan man, Muhammadju, attested. On the way to join Stein for this second, more audacious exploration of Central Asia, Muhammadju narrowly escaped an avalanche on a mountain pass. Seven of his companions had been swept to their deaths. Indeed Stein himself, after passing through the lower Swat Valley, was forced to spend two miserable days in a leaky, crumbling shelter near the foot of one of the most avalanche-prone passes, the Lowari, until a thunderstorm passed and the sky cleared.

The snow had been abnormally heavy the previous winter, and he had been warned not to attempt the crossing before June. But that was still a month off. If he waited until then, the gorges farther along his route would be rendered impassable by floodwaters from the melting snow. Stein knew the risks in early May could be reduced by crossing the 10,230-foot Lowari Pass at night, when plummeting temperatures firmed the snow fields into a hard crust. He divided his team of men and pack animals into three groups and spread his cargo so that each animal’s burden was no more than forty pounds. Then, at 1 a.m., with only moonlight and their lamps to guide them, Stein led the first group on the slow ascent. The other teams followed at fifteen-minute intervals to reduce the weight on the snow. All were aware that somewhere beneath their feet lay the frozen bodies of seventeen ponies and two dozen men who had perished there five months earlier when attempting to cross in a snowstorm.

As dawn broke, Stein reached the wind-blown top of the Lowari Pass and saw that his frustrating wait had been justified. About halfway down he spotted the signs of an avalanche that had swept through on the previous afternoon. He watched anxiously as his porters zigzagged their way down the almost sheer descent. As he reached the bottom of the pass and looked back at his other teams, one sight cheered him: his incompetent, troublesome cook being carried down and looking “more like a log than an animate being,” he later wrote. The useless cook (Stein had a string of them) was “incapable of facing prolonged hard travel, even when fortified by clandestine drink and doses of opium.” Stein planned to offload him in Kashgar.

Stein and his men continued through the mountains for most of May. The thin “poisonous air” made breathing difficult and caused severe high-altitude headaches. At times men sank up to their armpits in the snow and had to be pulled out by ropes. When they reached the Wakhan Corridor, the narrow strip of Afghan terrain that sticks out like a pointed finger in the country’s northeast, they supplemented their caravan with a team of yaks.

Dash, almost invisible against the snow except for his one black ear, crossed the mountains with only a single complaint: a rare, subdued whine uttered as he traversed the 16,152-foot Wakhjir Pass that separated Afghanistan from Turkestan. Stein felt his two-year-old fox terrier had more than earned the noble title he bestowed on him as a high-spirited puppy. His full name was Kardash Beg, Sir Snow Friend. As Stein descended the mountains into Turkestan he did so riding a yak with brave Dash mounted in front of him.

George and Catherine Macartney knew what drove their stocky middle-aged visitor to embark on his dangerous journey. It was not a thirst for adventures, although there would be plenty of those. Ideas were what fired him. Stein spoke of lost worlds, ancient civilizations and early encounters between East and West. He craved to know how ideas and cultures spread. And one in particular: how had tolerant, compassionate Buddhism, born in the Indian Himalayas, reached China, transforming and shape-shifting along the way? He was convinced the answer lay just beyond Kashgar, beneath the Taklamakan Desert, the vast almond-shaped eye in the center of Chinese Turkestan.

But this was not a landscape that surrendered its answers readily. With dunes that can rise 1,000 feet, the Taklamakan is one of the most inhospitable places on earth. Even its local name has an ominous, if apocryphal, translation: Go in and you won’t come out. Its shifting dunes, beside which the deserts of Arabia, Africa, and America seemed tame to Stein, are not the only formidable barriers to would-be explorers. To the east lies the legendary Gobi Desert. In the other three directions loom some of the world’s highest mountain ranges: the Kunlun and Karakorams to the south, the Pamirs to the west and the Tian Shan, or Celestial Mountains, to the north. No divine protector could have conjured a more effective cosmic “keep out” sign.

Much depended on this latest expedition. Stein had only reached this point by the tenacious persuasion of his dual masters—the British Museum and the government of India—and each would demand tangible results in return. Soon after starting his journey he had met with the new Viceroy of India, Lord Minto. They spoke of Stein’s lofty hopes for another Troy, the archaeological site excavated by the German Heinrich Schliemann less than forty years earlier. The expectations circulating around Stein were high. Minto was encouraging, even when Stein said he could not promise another set of Elgin Marbles, the classical Greek sculptures removed from the Parthenon and brought to Britain in the early nineteenth century. In fact, the treasures he brought back would in time invite comparisons as China’s Elgin Marbles. What Stein’s masters wanted were antiquities to fill their museums and add prestige to the Empire. Some fortunate archaeologists and adventurers could fund their own explorations, but Stein was a civil servant and obliged to plead and cajole for time away from desk-bound duties in steamy Calcutta. And he did so for what to many must have seemed dubious rewards. Although he lived in an era of exploration, Europe’s attention was focused on the rich archaeological pickings closer to home—especially in Greece, Egypt and the biblical Middle East. These were places where the roots of Western culture could be discerned and where the show-stopper hoards of gold, jewels, and tombs covered in hieroglyphics ignited the public’s imagination. Few people gave more than a passing thought to the backblocks of Muslim Central Asia, let alone the possibility that lost Buddhist kingdoms might lie buried beneath its vast sands. Who even knew that long before the rise of Islam, a great Buddhist civilization had flourished across what we know today as Pakistan, Afghanistan, and the far west of China? Who even cared?

Stein knew—and cared—more than most. He had already completed his first successful foray into the southern part of the Taklamakan, returning from his yearlong trip with evidence of sophisticated and unknown cultures. Among his treasures were coins, statues, and murals, but to Stein, with his love of the written word, it was the documents that were most fascinating. He returned with records on wood, paper, and leather and in a range of languages: Chinese, Tibetan, and, most intriguingly, ancient Indian scripts. Documents can never compete with glittering jewels and golden statues for dramatic, visual appeal, but for Stein they could reveal so much more. To his trained eye, the written word exposed how language, people, and customs traveled and revealed the poignant details of ordinary life. Whether it recorded the daily duties of soldiers, the chores of monks or even the clumsy attempts of a child to complete his schoolwork, a document could reconstitute a life, and through that Stein could glimpse a civilization. Such discoveries had dazzled his colleagues and made his name as an archaeologist and explorer. They also made him hungry for more.

His first expedition laid essential groundwork. It was an apprenticeship during which he made vital contacts and friendships among the Muslim
begs
(headmen) and the Chinese
ambans
(high-ranking officials) along the desert’s southern oases. He had assembled a trusted team of men, some of whom, like Muhammadju, rejoined him for his second expedition. His first trip had convinced him he could push much farther into the desert to uncover the secrets of the sands. If successful, he would cement his reputation and he could then devote his life to uncovering ancient knowledge. And if he failed? He risked forever being frustrated as a colonial wage slave and never again being allowed the freedom to explore.

He knew his intended route across the desert was feasible, if dangerous. The Swedish explorer Sven Hedin had proved it about a decade earlier. Hedin was the first European in living memory—and possibly the first since Marco Polo—to succeed. Younger and more gung-ho than Stein, Hedin had left two of his men dead from thirst—and nearly succumbed himself. Hedin had plucked long-buried items from the sands as he charged across the desert, but he was a geographer and cartographer, not an archaeologist. His interest was in the terrain, not what might lie below it. Even so, Hedin’s example helped prompt Stein to mount his own more careful, systematic exploration.