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By HENNY SENDER
August 18, 2007; Page P9

Shadow of the Silk Road
By Colin Thubron
HarperCollins, 363 pages, $25.95

The silk route is a network of paths connecting the heart of China to the mountains and deserts of Central Asia, eventually moving across the no-man's land of today's Afghanistan through Iran and finally to the eastward fringes of Europe. For centuries, it carried both goods and ideas: Chinese silk found its way west while Buddhism and Islam traveled in the opposite direction.

In 2003, travel writer Colin Thubron embarked on a 7,000-mile trek along the silk route, visiting shrines and mosques, villas and villages, along the way. The trip took eight months and brought him into contact with a host of fellow travelers -- and local inhabitants who never dreamed of traveling anywhere. "To follow the Silk Road is to follow a ghost," Mr. Thubron writes. Or perhaps many ghosts, since the Silk Road, as he notes, is "too rich and vulnerable for lasting peace."

In Samarkand, Uzbekistan -- in Central Asia -- Mr. Thubron makes his way to the tomb of Tamerlane (1336-1405), once known as Conqueror of the World, whose "complex barbarism" included a private library filled with illuminated manuscripts he could not read. "You catch your breath as barbarism turns into beauty," Mr. Thubron notes, describing the magnificent setting -- not least the gleaming, centuries-old religious schools in the city's central square, their surfaces decorated by purple and aquamarine tiles, their facades reflecting one another in the sun.

Much of Mr. Thubron's trek from Xian in China to the old Antioch in Turkey is about a strange kind of alchemy. Xian, the former Changan, was the capital of Tang Dynasty China in the ninth and 10th centuries, when the glory of the Middle Kingdom was at its peak. Today it is the site of a brash materialism and a rejection of old values. Buddhist concepts of heaven and nirvana have seemingly yielded to the paradise of a shopping mall.

In Mr. Thurbron's narrative, descriptions of ancient graves are interposed with accounts of present-day conversations. In western China, he probes the identity of a young Muslim Uighur -- the member of a Turkic people there -- "incongruous in his jeans, dangling keys and cellphone, praying in the dust, [speaking] bitterly of the Chinese incursions and the sterile streets." The young man seems to "encapsulate a deep dilemma," Mr. Thubron observes, the struggle between "urban desires and country loyalties, China and Islam." Another Uighur -- with red hair and blue eyes -- tells Mr. Thubron: "I don't know why I look like this." Still another imagines that he truly belonged "in Rome, although he did not know where Rome was."

Part of the beauty of the Silk Road is precisely this, the glorious diversity that contrasts so sharply with the homogeneity that various regimes, over time, have tried to impose. It is a story that silk itself silently speaks to. Chinese silk is found in Egyptian mummies dating back to the 10th century B.C. Remnants of robes embroidered with Persian winged horses and peacocks, as well as Chinese dragons, are found all along the Silk Road, just as graveyards show both Islamic moons and communist stars.

Graves are one of the leitmotifs in Mr. Thubron's travels. The graves are those of saints and conquerors and -- in the ancient city of Tus, Iran -- of the great Persian poet Firdausi. "This is the other Iran, the culture not of grievance but of heroes. It is a triumph of legend over history." But by the end of Mr. Thubron's journey, the graves he encounters most often are those of civilians, murdered in an endless chain of sectarian strife as barbaric as anything from centuries ago, victims of the Taliban and warlords or victims of the fighting between Iran and Iraq. In Tehran, Mr. Thubron meets a young filmmaker who had wished to make a movie about the charms of village life in Iran, only to discover that the village he had in mind was a charmless, barren place.

Ms. Sender is a Journal senior special writer.