Description

News from Tartary is the account of a journey from Peking to Kashmir, made in 1935 by that legendary adventurer, Peter Fleming. It lasted seven months and covered about 3,500 miles. The route chosen by Fleming and his companion, adventurer and writer Ella Maillart, took them westwards across a China torn by civil war to Xinjiang and then south to British India. It had been eight years since any foreigner had crossed Xinjiang. During that time few of those who entered that inhospitable and politically volatile region, which was under the control of a warlord supported by Stalin's Red Army, came out alive. After entering the lands of the Tartars by a little-known route and following the course of the ancient Silk Road, they reached Kashgar before crossing the Pamirs into India. Written with style and elegance, as well as acute observation and gentle irony, this is not just a description of a part of the world still difficult to visit, but of the last days of the Great Game, when Britain and Russia vied with each other for control of the unruly fiefs of Central Asia.