Extremes Along the Silk Road - Adventures off the World's Oldest Superhighway

Extremes Along the Silk Road - Adventures off the World's Oldest Superhighway

by Nick Middleton

John Murray, $135

Marco Polo complained of undercooked food as he journeyed through the high mountains of Central Asia. Nick Middleton, intrepid Oxford University geographer and somewhat irritating television traveller, demonstrates why - water boils at 100 degrees Celsius at sea level, but the higher you go, the lower the boiling point. At 3,890 metres, the boiling point is 80C. The goat should have stayed in the pot longer, Marco. Middleton makes an interesting guide in Extremes Along the Silk Road when he digresses from his script for the Channel 4 series of the same name. Less interesting is how, a few pages earlier, and the air being a tad thin in Tibet, he writes dramatically of 'nearly drowning from lack of oxygen'. Critics seem to cheer when the overly scripted Middleton finds himself in an unplanned pickle. The New York Times has noted before that he's at his best when he 'lets loose his inner geographer', and Middleton's observations and photographs of life along the Silk Road are worth wading through the tele-babble to reach.