Blog Post #9 - The Great Game

In this week's readings (Ch. 10-14 from the Frances Wood book), one of my favourite aspects was the intense curiosity which the Silk Road inspired in its explorers. Mostly described as "anti-social," people like Stein, Przhevalsky, and Elias became famous by traveling as far away from Western society as was possible. Elias was said to have wanted to avoided a business career in favour of less social endeavours, thereby leading him to cross Mongolia and explore Karakorum. That this was a logical alternative is fascinating to me, as some of the tasks required of them were quite unusual and grotesque. Sven Hedin's account of climbing into the Tower of Silence in order to obtain three human skulls (whose rotting flesh was still somewhat intact) is only one of many assignments given to these explorers, who likely would have preferred instead to avoid contact with such rotting corpses. The pull of the Silk Road seems to have been so powerful as to have made any required actions tolerable -- especially considering that Hedin returned to Kashgar in June 1895 yet left in order to embark on another exploration in December! The dedication to the exploration and collection of "Buddha images" and "Christian relics" in Khotan and Yarkand is just one of many which illustrate the intense attraction these men had to their expeditions.