BAD BACKPACKING ALONG THE SILK ROAD
After obtaining a BA in photography in 2004, at Salisbury College, I was at a
cross roads in my life. I was experiencing or about to experience several
major life changes - what better solution than to run away and take photos!
A few months before I had heard some beautiful, moving music by Severana
Nazarkhan, which I found out came from Uzbekistan, a country I knew
nothing about, but recognised the romantic names of its cities, such as
Samarkand, Bukhara and Tashkent. I went to a bookshop to find out more
about it, and found a guide book about travelling along the Silk Road, the
ancient route along which silk was brought from China to the West and an
idea slowly began to take root. Strangely enough, in Uzbekistan, I not only
met someone who told me she had taught the singer Severana Nazarkhan,
but also met the writer of the guide book, all at one of the strangest guest
houses I've ever stayed in.
My travelling companion was my son, Jan. We'd talked about doing some
travelling together in the past and this seemed like a good time to do it.
He'd lived in China, learning Chinese for a while, which made the first part of
our trip much easier.
I started the trip in Thailand, where Jan was living, but unfortunately hurt my
back, putting the trip at risk of not happening before we'd even started. We
carried on to Beijing, the official start of the trip, where I had some very
effective Chinese massage and we were able to carry on. We called it Bad
Backpacking and finding treatment on the way certainly enriched my
experience of the trip, sometimes in a very alarming way.
We travelled over-land on public transport from Beijing across China,
Kyrgystan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan and Iran. This meant we met a lot of
the people I had come to photograph, the need to stay in the cheapest places
we could find also meant we encountered some interesting people, both local
and other foreigners. Travelling overland meant I could see the changes in
the features and the cultures of the people, sometimes immediate at a border
and sometimes a slow merge from one racial characteristic to another.
Once we reached Western China, the majority of the people we met were
Muslims. It was fascinating to see the massive differences in the way people
adapted this to their life-styles. From Kyrgystan, where I met a girl wearing
a headscarf and bikini, to Iran where some of the women wear so many
clothes, you wonder how they don't melt in the summer heat.