Empires of the Indus: The Story of a River in Around the World

Sep 25, 2016 Andrea rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: indian-challenge-2016, challenge, around-the-world-2016, non-fiction, travel

3.5★ for this incredibly detailed and interesting journey up the length of the Indus and back in time.

I have seen this - upriver and back in time - done before and probably more engagingly in Simon Winchester's book, The River At The Centre Of The World, written 10 years earlier about the Yangtze, but that doesn't diminish my admiration for what this Brit journalist achieved as a 29yo solo, female traveller in a part of the world where you would not expect smooth sailing (pun intended). At time ...more

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Dec 12, 2020 Patricia rated it it was amazing

You can't get much more off the beaten track than Alice Albinia's travels from the Arabian Sea up the Indus River, through Pakistan, Baluchistan, the Punjab, Afghanistan, Jammu & Kashmir, Baltistan and finally Tibet. I've read rows of travelogues by women sojourners, ranging from those who travel with camel trains of guides and supplies, others with just a companion or two and a donkey cart, but none who has ventured into such treacherous terrain or politically dangerous sites alone, and I mean You can't get much more off the beaten track than Alice Albinia's travels from the Arabian Sea up the Indus River, through Pakistan, Baluchistan, the Punjab, Afghanistan, Jammu & Kashmir, Baltistan and finally Tibet. I've read rows of travelogues by women sojourners, ranging from those who travel with camel trains of guides and supplies, others with just a companion or two and a donkey cart, but none who has ventured into such treacherous terrain or politically dangerous sites alone, and I mean alone. There's hardly a mention of a sleeping bag; a cooking stove was a luxury only purchased on the upper heights of Tibet; and if mountaineering boots were in her backpack, she forgot to mention them. I wish she had included a list of the contents of her backpack as an epilogue; this woman knew how to travel light.

As we follow her across muddy plains and snow-covered mountains, she relates the stories that have brought her to the region--of past kings and warriors, prophets and outlaws in the Urdu she has learned that enables this lone western traveller to be accepted. She buys a burqa to cover herself when she needs to (trying on several to find one that covers yet allows movement), but pulls on flowery shalwar kameez when using her feminine wiles to convince military guards and other gatekeepers to let her visit otherwise forbidden sites. Despite travelling through some of what is labelled as the most dangerous terrain in the world, I only remember two instances of when she was afraid, and one was when a stray village dog barked and she picked up a stone to defend herself if needed. This was one gutsy traveller; the traveller many of us would like to be but wouldn't dare. The traveller who manages on old military and survey maps, depends on strangers' hospitality for a roof over her head at night and a warm cup of tea in the morning., and ruminates as she walks on the "separatist sentiments that have ruled over hundreds of years of shared culture."

Alice Albinia's book is a page-turner, a rare travelogue of a place few of us will ever travel (or ever thought we would want to travel), told by someone with the self-assurance of an intellectually curious optimist. I've read enough histories of this part of the world to be fairly familiar with both its ancient roots, epic tales, religious sects and history right up and through the 1947 Indian-Pakistan partition, but few have that spark of personal involvement that Empires of the Indus has that keeps you up at night reading page after page. By the last chapter I was in tears (spoiler alert) along with her as, at the end of her trail, she looks across at the 'source of the indus', no more, dammed up into oblivion to generate hydro-electric power for China. ...more

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