Karavansara

East of Constantinople, West of Shanghai

Category Archives: Armchair adventuring


by 1 Comment

A rook gun and a Winchester

The issue of the guns carried by Peter Fleming on his journey caused an amusing exchange on The Times when Fleming and Maillart came back from Asia. The object of the scandal was the following passage – printed in The Times on the 18th of November 1935 and later included in New from Tartary.

Our armament consisted of one .44 Winchester rifle, with 300 rounds of pre-War ammunition of a poorish vintage, which was not worth firing; and a second-hand .22 rook rifle, which surpassed itself by keeping us in meat throughout the three months during which there was anything to shoot.

44 winchester

a .44 Winchester

Some readers were shocked at the idea of a Westerner facing the dangers of the Silk Road with such inadequate armaments1.
Some promptly wrote to The Times expounding their opinions.
One letter in particular is worth reprinting, together with Peter Fleming’s response to it. Continue reading →


by 3 Comments

Extremes under the rain

middleton extremes on the silk roadYesterday the postman delivered a nice hardback copy of Nick Middleton’s Extremes along the Silk Road, thus stopping a gaping hole in my collection of Silk Road-themed books. The volume details Middleton’s expedition from China to Istanbul following the classic routes through Central Asia.

The book had been on my to-read list forever, but so far I always had something more urgent to add to the collection. Then I spotted this copy, and it was a wonderful bargain and a nice catch: a used book I paid about five bucks, and in pristine condition.
Or rather I should say, it was in pristine conditions.

You see, I was not at home when the postman came, and he decided to slip the book package between the bars of my courtyard’s gate.
It’s now three days that it rains heavily.
Yesterday I was out for various errands, and I came back home around 8 p.m.: the packet remained under heavy rain for about ten hours.
The effect was the same as leaving it under an open faucet for the best part of the day.

So now I have a water-damaged, second-hand copy of Nick Middleton’s Extremes along the Silk Road.
A little warped, but still readable. Which is more that I can say of the gas bill that was left together with the book, and that spent the night drying on the stove.

I’ll let you know about the book. Just give it time to dry.


by 2 Comments

The Leica III

Both Fleming and Maillart carry a Leika camera.
Based on the writings of Peter Fleming, the camera has been identified as a Leica III (also known as a Leika F), a model produced between 1933 and 1939.

leica III

It has been argued that Maillart (that carried two cameras) had discovered the Leica – a very advanced camera, for the time – through her photographer friend (and possibli lover) Annemarie Schwarzenbach, and had later suggested the same model to Fleming1. Continue reading →


by 2 Comments

The train leaves at midnight

And so it begins.
On the night of the 16th of February 1935, Peter Fleming and Ella “Kini” Maillart leave Peking in the company of the Smigunov, Stepan and Nina, two Russians that will act as guides and interpreters for a part of the trip.
Both Fleming and Maillart are journalists, and they both want to see what’s goin on in Sinkiang, or Chinese Turkistan, a region that was last visited almost ten years before by Owen Lattimore and has been sinking in civil war and chaos ever since.

sinkiang

Their plan is to travel from Peking to British India, following a southern route through Western China – the hardest route, but also, they hope, the least guarded.
The two journalists are officially going to Koku Nor to shoot some game. They are traveling light1, and they are not exactly friends.
Or are they? Continue reading →


by 3 Comments

Trail Provisions

reading challenge patch 2016 1So apart from old clothes, a few books, two compasses and two portable typewriters, we took with us from Peking only the following supplies: 2lb. of marmalade, 4 tins of cocoa, 6 bottles of brandy, 1 bottle of Worcester sauce, 1 lb. of coffee, 3 small packets of chocolate, some soap, and a good deal of tobacco…

Ready to go?1

  1. Ella Maillart adds pasta, curry, mustard and porridge to the list. ↩


by Leave a comment

The Challenge Page

As you can see from the menu in top right corner of this page, there is now a static page for the Karavansara Reading Challeng 2016 – this will serve as an introduction to the project, and a repository for links and other information that might be required.

reading challenge patch 2016 1Also, I’m refurbishing the @karavansarablog channel on Twitter, and will use the #KaravanChallenge hashtag for announcements, blog post diffusion and, why not, scheduled live chats on Twitter.

AND we have a badge, that you see here on the left – feel free to steal it and expose it on your blog, website or social media to spread the word about the Challenge.
You can link it back to http://Karavansara.live, or to the above mentioned page.

Cheers, and thank you!