August 19, 2011

• The Silk Road (Sort Of) Overland
  Friday 19 August 2011
  
  I managed to find the exact spot where the Silk Road used to start in Xi'an this morning, and I also saw the Big Wild Goose Pagoda. However, I ran out of time and I wasn't able to visit the Grand Mosque a second time, which was a shame.

  The Western Market in Xi'an was the beginning of the Silk Road in medieval times. This is where the caravans carrying silk and other goods started their journeys westward. This was where the traders setting out from the Grand Bazaar in Istanbul finally arrived. So, when I have now finally arrived at the end point of my eastbound Silk Road journey, Xi'an in China, I just needed to tie up one last loose end, namely to find this Western Market, which now no longer exists. The Silk Road starting point is not one of the major sights for visitors coming to Xi'an, but it's known and marked on city maps, so it wasn't particularly hard to find it.

  

  The Silk Road starting point turned out to have this gigantic caravan of camels, traders and goods - a 30 metre long statue made of stone. Very fitting. I took maybe 40 pictures here and then I felt this summer's travelling project was complete. Mission accomplished.

  

  Before I had to catch the airport bus, I had enough time to see the Big Wild Goose Pagoda, one of the major sights in Xa'na, and having been built in 652AD, it's very much a Silk Road site.

  

   

  

  Climbing the pagoda itself was great, but I think it was seeing all the (by now very familiar Silk Road) patterns and designs in the ceilings and on the walls of all the Buddhist temples hare that I found so interesting.

  

   

   They were the same type of Silk Road patterns I had fund in the mosques and mausoleums in Bukhara and Samarkand. It's fascinating to see how certain patterns and designs travelled along the whole of the Silk Road and spread that way, especially the way the very same patterns were used both in mosques and temples alike.

  

  On the bus on my way to Xi'an Airport, I very much had this feeling of mission accomplished. Yay, I did it! In spite of all the hiccups and issues that came up along the way, I did travel from Istanbul and Xi'an.

  As I was sitting on the bus, I also kind of pondered a bit on one of the things that they had said in the Discovery Channel Silk Road travel book, my faithful companion along the way, and that is how the Silk Road was the mediaeval equivalent of the Internet. It was the Information Super Highway of the past, where goods, ideas, food, traditions, religious beliefs etc. travelled back and forth and spread as a result. Thinking about it, Silk Road would be the perfect name for any new up-and-coming web browser.

  The fight to Beijing was uneventful. I very much enjoyed having my very own assigned seat, though as we were boarding, I was wondering to myself whether they would allow for a few standing passengers.

  At midnight, I'll be taking the Emirates flight to Dubai. The aircraft is the brand new super jumbo Airbus 380, and I'm very excited about this flight. I've seen it at the gate. This plane is gigantic!

  

   

  • 10:04 pm
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