SILK ROAD NOTE-MAKING & SUMMARY

 

SILK ROAD

 NOTE-MAKING & SUMMARY

 

1.  SILK-ROAD-CHINA’S GIFT TO THE WEST

a.   Greek word ‘Seres” which means ‘the land of silk’.

b.   Refers primarily to the land routes connecting East Asia & Southeast Asia with South Asia, Persia, the Arabian Peninsula, East Africa & South Europe.

c.    It was an ancient network of trade routes btwn Greece & China

d.   Established during the Han Dynasty of China.

e.   Linked World Commerce btwn 130 BCE-1453 CE.

f.     It helped generate trade commerce in a number of diff. kingdoms and empires

g.   Helped for ideas, culture, inventions, & unique product to spread across much settled world.

h.   Venetian explorer Marco Polo used S.R. to travel from Italy to China, reached Xanadu, the lavish summer palace of the Mangolian Emperor Kublai Khan.

i.       Fruits, vegetables, livestock, grain, leather & hides, tools, religious objects, artwork, precious stones, metal, More importantly  Language, culture, religious beliefs, philosophy & Science.

2.  DEPARTURE FROM RAVU

a.   Author leaves Ravu along with Daniel, an interpreter, &

b.   Tsetan, who was a tourist guide.

c.     Lhamo, the lodge owner lady at Ravu,  gifts  a long-sleeved sheepskin coat.

d.    where it would be very cold. Tsetan knew a short cut to reach the Mount Kailash.

e.   The journey would be smooth if there was no snow.

3.   DROKBAS ON THE WAY.

a.    passing through the hills, author sees individual drokbas (nomad shepherds) looking after their flocks.

b.    Both men and women were seen wearing thick woollen clothes.

c.     Drokbas would stop and stare, sometimes waving to them as they passed.

 

 

4.  ENCOUNTER WITH TIBETAN MASTIFFS

a.    Tibetan mastiffs were seenaround  the nomad’s tents.

b.   The T.M. dogs used by the shepherds.

 

c.    They would bark furiously and fearlessly.

d.   They would make a chase for 100 meters to  the car.

e.   In earlier days, Tibetan mastiffs became popular in China’s imperial courts as hunting dogs.

f.      They were brought along the Silk Road as a tax payment from Tibet.

5.   ICE BLOCKS THE ROAD.

a.   Reached to the Valley of Rivers.

b.   The rivers appear wide and clogged with brilliant white ice.

c.    The turn became sharper & ride bumpier.

d.    The turns became sharper and more difficult to climb.

e.    The author got  a severe headache.

f.     Suddenly snow started falling and soon blocked the route.

g.    height of 5210 metres above sea level.

h.   At  a height of 5515 metres top of the pass, marked with a large cairn of rocks.

i.      the atmospheric pressure became so low that Tsetan had to open the lid of the petrol tank to release the evaporated fuel.

6.  HOR

a.   Vestiges of the Tethys Ocean bordered Tibet.

b.   The great continental collision lifted it skyward.

c.    The Salt gatherers wearing long sheepskin coats *& salt-crusting boots emerged from the blindingly white lake.

d.   Hor situated on the shore of Lake Manasarovar, on the old trade route between Lhasa and Kashmir.

e.   Hor was a grim, miserable place, with  no vegetation, just dust and rocks, full of  accumulated rubbish everywhere.

f.     It has lost  the past  holy glory.

g.    Daniel returns to Lhasa from there.

h.    Tsetan got the flat tyre of the car repaired.

7.    STAY AT DARCHEN.

a.   By 10.30 pm author reaches to Darchen. It was the end of the road.

b.   The author passes  troubled night.

c.    Sinuses filled & chest odd, spent night propping aginst the wall.

d.   Tsetan takes him to Darchen Medical College.

e.   The M.C. appears like a Monastery.

f.     The doctor clad like a Buddhist Monk, not in white coat, examined authors veins at wrist.

g.   Medicine was a  brown envelope stuffed with 15 screws of paper, a 5 day course, contained a brown powder in small, spherical brown pellets tasting like cinnamon, looked like sheep dung,

h.    Tsetan was a good Buddhist and believed in life after death.

i.     However, he was worried that the author’s death could affect his business.

8.    THE AUTHOR FINDS A COMPANION IN  NORBU

a.   Darchen, sparsely populated town,  dusty, partially derelict & punctuated by heaps  of rubbish piled around,.

b.   Authour wanted to reach Mount Kailash to do kora.

c.    sitting in the only cafe ,  looking for someone who could speak or understand English

d.   No pilgrims, as the season had not yet started.

e.   He sees Norbu, a plump Tibetan working in Beijing at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, reading an English book.

f.     Norbu also wanted to do kora, although he was not a religious person, a practising Buddhist. So both of them decided to do kora together.

g.   Norbu,  was wearing a windcheater, worked in Beijing at the Chinese Academy Of Social Sciences in the Institure of Ethnic Literature.

h.   Norbu was writing academic papers about KAILASH KORA & IT’S IMPORTANCE IN VARIOUS WORKS OF BUDDHIST LITERATURE.

i.     Author tags their company as ‘Two academics who have escaped from the Library’

j.     Though the author envisaged making trek in the company of devout believers, had to satisfy with Norbu.