Karavansara

East of Constantinople, West of Shanghai

Category Archives: Armchair adventuring


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A new toy!

I’ve been made aware of a cool thing called PlacingLiterature, which does… well, what I’m planning to do as part the Karavansara Reading Challenge 2016: make a map, plot book scenes on it.

Placing Literature is the global clearinghouse for location-based literary information, collecting crowdsourced information about books and the locations where they take placeā€”and displaying them all on an interactive world map. Since launching in June 2013, readers, educators, librarians and authors have mapped nearly 3,000 places from novels, short stories, poems and plays ranging from Shakespeare to Kerouac.

The site has been freshly relaunched, and while I still like the Google Earth because it has more features, functionalities, whistles and bells, it almost seems a pity not to use PlacingLiterature.
I mean, new launch two weeks before the beginning of the Challenge?
If this isn’t a sign…

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On the other hand, it looks like they are chiefly interested in fiction.
But check out both the site and their blog – there’s lot of stuff in there.

I might start submitting scenes from pulp books1.
Anyone cares to join in?2

  1. starting with my own, of course ↩
  2. ok, you think about it, we’ll talk about it after the Challenge. ↩


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Otto & Carl’s Excellent Adventure

I’m still collecting material about Otto Torvik and Carl Persson – that were part of the Swdish Mission in East Turkestan in the 1930s.
While I collect more stuff, anyone interested in the Swedish Mission might like to get a look at the Swedish Mission Project on the Internet Archives – which collects all of the films and audio recordings from th eexpedition, plus a link to a nice book on the subject.

An excellent resource.


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The Desert Road to Turkestan

DOL2Last night, I dug out the only Owen Lattimore book I own – 1928 The Desert Road to Turkestan.
Of all the adventurers on the Silk Road I discovered during my researches, Lattimore is probably the one I have more dear.
Maybe it’s because he was subject to much injustice, or because he was a keen observer and a charming storyteller.

Owen Lattimore was born in the USA in 1900. He was raised in China and educated in Switzerland and England. Unable to afford a university education, he got back in China, studied Chinese and was employed by a British commercial firm as jack of all trades and troubleshooter.
A load of wool blocked somewhere in the wild at the whim of a warlord? Send in Lattimore.
He actually liked it. Continue reading →


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That second language thing

So, it went like this… yesterday I posted the link to Sasha A. Palmer’s post on the e-Books India blog.
This morning my friend Claire1 did her take on Palmer’s post – you can find her thoughts here.
And I thought, why not?
Sort of like a pinball effect – ideas bouncing back and forth.

pinball

After all I’m doing my writing in English most of the time, nowadays, and Karavansara, that started out as an experiment, has now become my primary blog.
So, here’s my own take on writing in what is still my Second Language, and the benefits thereof. Continue reading →


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Google: Maps or Earth?

Putting together equipment and supplies for the Karavansara Reading Challenge 2016 means – like with any exploration project – getting maps.
As I mentioned in a previous post, I’ll use two folding paper maps as reference, but will rely on Google for a lot of quick-and-dirty geographical information. I’d like to plot the course of our virtual travel, following the steps of Maillart & Fleming – maybe linking the posts and other external contents to the map.

China-Silk-Road-Map-full

And as I was trying to learn how all those marvels are done, I stumbled on a nice question: Google Earth or Google Maps? Continue reading →


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Karavansara Reading Challenge: the Bookshelf

So, the Karavansara Reading Challenge 2016 is getting real, and I have no idea of what it’s going to happen, or how.
It’s part of the fun, I guess.
We have an official start date – February the 16 2016. Peter Fleming and Ella Maillart left Peking on the 16th of February 1935, so it feels like the right day to start.

quote-when-i-crossed-asia-with-my-friend-peter-fleming-we-spoke-to-no-one-but-each-other-during-many-ella-maillart-117807

In the next days I’ll start posting contents that will be hopefully interesting for both active challenge participants, for lurkers and for passers-by.
Today, a short roundup of the Challenge Bookshelf, the stuff I’ll keep at hand in the next weeks… Continue reading →