Book review: Lands of lost borders, by Kate Harris
This intrepid tale of 2 daring cycle journeys along the Silk Road had me hooked from the start.
And I’m not even a cyclist. In fact, I’m not altogether fond of cyclists, having had too many close encounters with them riding illicitly along the footpaths of my city. But I make an exception for Kate Harris and her friend Melissa Yule.
The book begins with them speeding their cycles – heavily-loaded with camping equipment and food supplies – through not one, but two, checkpoints on the Chinese-Tibetan border, in the inky darkness of the wee small hours. Now that takes guts.
What this book is about
Lands of lost borders is Kate’s memoir of her and Mel’s journeys along the Silk Road, taken in 2006 and 2011. She describes the cities, towns and landscapes they pass through and the brief but memorable encounters with locals who generously provide them with shelter and food. Every day brings new terrain and fresh experiences to reflect upon.
In Part 1 we learn about Kate and Mel’s backgrounds, their first journey along the Silk Road – which was intended to cover 4,000 km of China in 4 months – and what Kate did next. She headed off to graduate school at Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar, then to the USA to pursue a Master’s degree.
Parts 2 and 3 cover Kate and Mel’s second journey, 5 years later, from Turkey to Leh in northern India. This would take them through 10 countries in 10 months, including Georgia, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, China, Nepal and Northern India – over 10,000 km.
About the author – Kate Harris
Kate grew up in small-town Canada, where her restless, adventurous spirit soon became evident – much of it fuelled by books. Reading about Shackleton, Thor Heyerdal and Marco Polo excited her imagination and led her to dream of becoming an explorer. Most of all, she dreamed of going to Mars.
Young Kate’s passion for her dream was sufficiently persuasive to attract grants and scholarships that provided her with some early travel opportunities. This talent was to prove extremely useful in later years. Both of the Silk Road journeys were funded by sponsorships and donations.
It’s clear that Kate is intellectually brilliant and exceptionally gifted. She goes on to amass a string of academic qualifications and awards to her name. Her writing is eloquent, insightful and peppered with historical, cultural and literary references and quotations. But it’s also beautifully evocative and poetic in its own right, sensuously describing the sights, sounds and smells around her in a way that brings the scene to life for the reader. The mountainous landscape around Kudi in Western China is “…the kind of country that consists entirely of edges” – I love that.
Main themes of the book
We learn a lot about the countries along the Silk Road – their landscapes, history, ethnography, social and political challenges. In that sense, Lands of lost borders is a fascinating travel memoir. I don’t plan to discuss this aspect in detail, however. Instead, I want to focus on some of the interesting themes that emerge from the book.
Exploration
Over time, Kate’s youthful fascination with explorers, and with the red planet, was diluted by unwelcome realities. A simulated Mars mission in Utah led her to realise that being contained in a heavy space suit might not offer the sensory planetary experience she had dreamed about. Her discovery that Marco Polo was more of a hard-nosed merchant, than a true explorer, was a crushing blow. As was her realisation that Darwin’s adventurous journeys on the Beagle were followed not by further explorations, but by a retreat to conventional life in a country cottage.
All of this was deeply disappointing. Was there anyone who, like Kate, was driven by nothing other than the desire to discover uncharted wilderness – and exalt in its beauty? For her, exploration represents “the most rational response to finding yourself alive”. For others, including some of her heroes, the motives were rather less altruistic: commercial gain, ego (a narcissistic desire to discover new lands that could bear their name), or colonial expansion for the benefit of a greedy motherland.
Is exploration even still a thing, in an age when every part of the planet appears to have already been discovered and mapped? The Silk Road route itself is well-traversed, but Kate still hopes that untrodden wildernesses remain in its vicinity. As the journey progresses, her findings are sometimes good, sometimes distressing – and sometimes not at all what she expected.
Borders
The more Kate studies exploration, the more interested she becomes in its social and political aspects, which divert her attention away from the laboratory-based research that she originally planned to pursue. The clue is in the book’s title. On a couple of occasions, she and Melissa – unable to afford legal permits on their student budgets – creep through border checkpoints in the dead of night, or find ways to circumvent immigration bureaucracy.
When the landscape on one side of a checkpoint exactly resembles what’s on the other side, borders appear to be arbitrary and pointless. Could we do without them? “They articulate our deepest, least exalted desires, for prestige and permanence, order and security, always at the cost of someone or something else,” reflects Kate. She notes that borders are obstacles to human connection, granting privilege to those who can pass, while others are contained within, denied this freedom.
Borders have created forts and frontiers, flashpoints of conflict that have become blots on beautiful landscapes. But the news is not all bad. Kate and Mel learn of certain no-go zones between frontiers that have become sanctuaries for wildlife, without human encroachment to disturb them.
Environmental politics
The very existence of the Silk Road – in reality a collection of many roads – owes itself to commerce. Kate understands the human need for survival and to earn a living, but the lack of respect for the environment upsets her deeply, sometimes reducing her to tears.
“What is the point of science and exploration if people persist in living and dying as they always have, namely selfishly, obliviously?”
Once again, however, there’s the occasional unexpected upside. In Tajikistan she comes upon someone who breeds a rare species of wild sheep purely for trophy hunters, who pay for the privilege of shooting them. Ironically, in this case, the trophy hunting has led to the conservation of the species, to ensure the sustainability of the business. Which provides much-needed jobs for the locals, in this impoverished country.
The book presents a number of these ambiguities, addressing some of the thorny dilemmas that modern life can present in the context of progress versus preservation. Sometimes there are no easy answers, and compromise has to be achieved.
Friendship
The close friendship between Kate and Mel, who have known each other since they were 10 years old, is a major factor in the success of their expeditions. Being cooped up in a tent for months on end, in the most inhospitable of conditions, takes a special kind of connection. That they survived each other for one trip, then willingly did it all over again, speaks volumes. I enjoy the humour and banter that bounce between them, the mickey-taking and the wry observations.
Others come and go during the journeys, accompanying them for a while. No doubt they enjoyed the change of dynamic from time to time. But Mel and Kate’s friendship is enduring. Acknowledging this at the end of their journey, Kate says of Mel that “her sense of absurdity perfectly matched the landscape we passed through, and her commentary about it was always illuminating” – which invariably meant, very funny.
Why I loved this book
If it’s not already evident, I absolutely loved this book. So much so, that the books I read immediately before and after it probably earned a harsher review from me than they deserved, and that they would have received otherwise. Such is the level of Kate’s writing. In some ways, it’s a tough read – because you can’t rush through or skim read any of it. You have to pay attention to every sentence, or you’ll miss something amazing.
As previously mentioned, I loved the humour and the funny anecdotes. Such as the Chinese border official who Kate thought was about to arrest her, but who in fact just wanted to gift her a snack of 3 cucumbers. Not what you expect to happen, in the middle of nowhere! Then there was Kate and Mel’s hilarious attempt to learn unpronounceable Georgian phrases.
The narrative offers the perfect mix of travelogue, social commentary, ethnography, historical background and personal reflection – without overdoing any of these. I enjoyed Kate’s beautiful descriptions of the jaw-dropping scenery and marvelled at her fitness, fortitude, resilience, determination and guts.
I appreciated the balanced viewpoints offered by Kate as she wrestles with political and environmental realities that conflict so strongly with her own ideals. She’s not afraid to concede to other points of view, nor is she willing to be selective with evidence in order to support her own. This is a very honest book. As she says, in an interview with Rolf Potts, “The hardest thing, in travel and life generally, is keeping an open mind. A closed mind is the most rigid order imaginable.”
Final thoughts
Kate is the polar opposite to me in almost every way. She craves wilderness and adventure, whereas I crave comfort and luxury – the safer and cosier, the better. When I was reading the part about her and Mel shivering in sub-zero temperatures, when even their tent froze solid as a board, I was tucked up in bed with a cup of tea, not envying them one little bit!
Sometimes, the people you have least in common with, can be the most interesting – especially if they’re as open-minded and funny as Kate. I’m full of admiration for what she and Mel have achieved. Even though I don’t want to be them, I’m glad that there are people like them in the world.
If Kate’s physical journey wasn’t spellbinding enough, her own emotional journey was equally revealing and interesting. I watched her go from enthusiastic youthful idealism, through realism and crushing disappointment, to acceptance of life’s ambiguities and grey areas – and finding her own peace within them.
Kate now lives off-grid in a log cabin in the wilds of Atlin, British Columbia, with her partner and two dogs. She has learned to fly her own small plane – a 1957 Cessna 172. Lands of lost borders has won no fewer than 6 literary awards, which doesn’t surprise me. I look forward to her next book.
You can find out more about Kate on her website or follow her on Instagram where she posts stunning photos of the landscape around her home.
Post-script: the silk road meets mars
As she travels along the Silk Road, Kate often compares its lunar-like landscapes with Mars. She jokes that in places, it seems to offer even less oxygen than the red planet! With some justification: it turns out that the Gobi Desert in Mongolia has the geography and climate that most closely resemble those of Mars.
So I was fascinated to learn of a new tourist attraction in Mongolia – a Mars Camp due to open in 2029. It’s called the Mars-V project and has the objective of preparing tourists for future travel to Mars. Whatever would Kate think of this! Maybe she wouldn’t be interested, after her experience at the Utah camp. Would you go?
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