“ … others have biked higher and farther,” she writes.

She clearly sees that her own values of travel reflect the privilege of the country and culture that formed her-but she never loses the contagious idealistic energy that spurred her expedition in the first place. The self-awareness she brings to these musings feels refreshing. Through Harris’s imaginative, carefully designed prose, we experience her daily discoveries along with her, from slogging through freezing rain and being warned of terrorists in Turkey, to pedaling into the the hot headwinds of Uzbekistan’s desert, to disguising herself as a Chinese tourist to bike through Tibet’s mountains-where foreigners aren’t allowed without permits and guides.Īlongside those lively descriptions and sometimes-tense moments- What was that sound outside the tent? Should we continue even though our Uzbekistan visas never arrived?-Harris also dives into deeper questions about what it means to be an explorer today, when Earth is well-mapped and surveyed by satellites and most of us travel in relative comfort and ease. So she and her friend Mel set out again, this time to complete the entire historic Silk Road route. The bodily act of crossing borders-both political and geographic-feels more true to her vision of exploration than peering down a microscope.

But the visceral experience of that bike trip sticks with her. She comes back to continue a more academic pursuit of discovery-studying the history of science and exploration at Oxford, and then heading to an MIT lab aiming for a doctorate. Her first bike trip cycling part of the Silk Road with a childhood friend seems something like a vacation at first. Harris admires David-Néel for knowing herself and seeking adventure for its own sake-not necessarily being 'jolted from a routine, domestic existence by some kind of emotional crisis.' (And Harris's story lives up to that value.) She envisions becoming an astronaut, obsessing about going to Mars. She devours the literature of discovery, from the first Antarctic expeditions to the travels of Alexandra David-Néel. Growing up in small-town Ontario, Harris dreams of being an explorer, falling under the spell of her mother’s childhood book, an illustrated, abridged edition of Marco Polo’s travels on the Silk Road. One of the beauties of Lands of Lost Borders lies in how it harkens to a universal, almost childish dream of exploration that transcends gender. But sometimes it feels that adventure for adventure’s sake is still considered the territory of men. Which are all important, legitimate stories in themselves, of course. But often their tales are wrapped in an additional plot: A breakup. Not that women going on great adventures and writing about them are rare. Kate Harris’s memoir of cycling the length of the Silk Road from Turkey to the Himalaya succeeds in becoming a rare thing-a true adventure book by a woman.

Kate harris silk road