Oxiana

It’s time for British travel writing of the first half of the 20th century, when the going was good, to borrow a phrase from a title of such a work, though not one I’m reading now (I read it just out of college). Not long ago, I picked up The Road to Oxiana by Robert Byron, published in 1937, based on a trip he took a few years earlier.

A travel book after my own heart: Byron heads out, overland toward Afghanistan via Cyprus, Palestine, Iraq and Iran, and focuses on what he sees, which he describes in thoughtful but not pedantic detail. Not as easy as it sounds. He also recreates conversations with some of the people he meets along with way, truthfully I believe, since they have that flavor of the sort of half-conversations between people who only partly understand each other.

At one camp [in Afghanistan] two men stopped us. “Where is your kibitka?” they asked.

“My what?”

“Your kibitka?”

“I don’t understand.”

With expressions of contempt and irritation, they pointed to their own felt-and-wattle huts: “Your kibitka—you must have a kibitka. Where is it?”

“In Inglistan.”

“Where is that?”

“In Hindostan.”

“Is that in Russia?”

“Yes.”