The last caravan on the Silk Road.
In 1996 four men set out from Xian on foot with ten Bactrian camels and walked 12,000 kilometres of the ancient Silk Road to Turkey. This is the record of that expedition — the route, the photographs, the animals and the people who made it.
12,000
Kilometres walked
6
Countries crossed
4
TEAM MEMBERS
10
BACTRIAN CAMELS
A joke in Galata, ten years after a campfire
The idea was first raised in 1994, over dinner in a rooftop apartment above Istanbul’s old Galata district. Its real origin lay further back: in September 1986, on a bus descending from the Khunjerab Pass, the photographer Arif Aşçı saw a resting caravan of long-haired Bactrian camels beside a fire on the banks of the Kashgar River.
Two years of preparation followed the dinner. On 2 June 1996, at the western gate of Xian, a letter written on ram’s-skin parchment by President Süleyman Demirel was presented to President Jiang Zemin, who answered with a letter written on paper. The caravan left the city on 4 June.
“They were a photograph, a drawing, a remnant of a past that stretched back two thousand years: a caravan huddled to keep warm besides a campfire.”
Six countries, west by the setting sun
I · China
Xian to Kashgar
Six months to the Kyrgyz border, through Lanchou, the Gansu Corridor, Dunhuang and the Takla Makan oases.
II · Kyrgyzstan
The Torugart Pass
In at 4,000 metres, then lost in the Tianshan mountains between Naryn and the Alato Pass.
III · Uzbekistan
Samarkand and Bukhara
The queen cities of the road, with a detour by van to the walled city of Khiva while the camels rested.
IV · Turkmenistan
Merv and Ashkhabad
Customs difficulties at the border; the desert market at Ashkhabad filmed before moving on.
V · Iran
Tehran to Tabriz
Three camels bought here — Demavend, Mehnaz and Shirine — before the Gurbülağ crossing into Turkey.
VI · Turkey
Ankara, Bursa, Çan, Istanbul
Received by President Demirel at Çankaya, then the final ceremony at Topkapı Palace.
“I dedicate this journey to the land that bears all of our collective memories, to all eternal, free, and ever-roaming spirits.”
