Book review: Tea and grit, by Helen Watson

A Scottish couple cycle over 15,000 km from Glasgow to China along the Silk Road.

I was excited to hear about Tea and grit, because Kate Harris’s book on cycling the Silk Road was my favourite read of 2025. How similar or different would these two accounts be? Answer: very different, fortunately!

What this book is about

Helen and Ed Watson’s epic cycling tour started in Glasgow and ended in China. Tea and grit skips the European section, beginning in February 2010 in Turkey. From there, the Watsons venture into Syria, Eastern Turkey, Iran, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan before entering China. They chose this southerly route along the Silk Road in order to avoid the worst of the remaining winter, but still encountered temperatures of -15°C overnight along the Mediterranean coast. I shiver to think what this must have felt like.

A year later, when Kate Harris and Melissa Yule set off on their second Silk Road journey as recounted in Lands of Lost Borders, the route that the Watsons had taken was no longer an option due to the Arab Spring and civil war in Syria. The two friends therefore took the northern route through Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Tibet, Nepal, China and India.

The Big Why

As an utterly unadventurous person myself, never to be found on a bicycle or in a tent, I was keen to find out what attracts someone to this level of hard yakka. I can well imagine that the landscapes are incredible. But there’s also the extreme temperatures, snowstorms, sandstorms, potential encounters with terrorists and unwelcome attention from males to deal with.

For Helen, the answer is simple: however challenging, nothing compares with the excitement of a great journey:

“For me, meaning was not to be found in city life or in the cocoon of the still chapel but looking outwards as much as possible, to the breathtaking diversities of places and people, for this limited time that I would spend on earth. It was the open road and the desert that were calling.’

Fair enough – we’re all different when it comes to where we source our energy and what brings us joy. So why the Silk Road? Helen explains that she and Ed wanted to gain first-hand experience of countries that they felt were often misrepresented in the media, especially in the wake of the September 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center.

About the author

Like Kate Harris, Helen Watson is a highly educated and very practical woman. She holds a PhD in evolutionary biology from the University of Edinburgh and is now Head of Conservation and Science Programmes at the Royal Zoological Society of Scotland.

Although she was born in Scotland, Helen grew up in an immigrant community in Switzerland, which exposed her to a diversity of languages and cultures. She credits this experience with fuelling her interest in other lands and peoples.

Brought together by their love of the great outdoors, Helen and Ed met as undergraduates at St Andrews University, where they were members of the Mountaineering Club.

Main themes of the book

As with my review of Kate’s book, I don’t plan to summarise the Watsons’ journey in this post, but to focus on a few interesting themes that I picked out in the book. Suffice to say that travel literature fans will definitely enjoy Tea and grit. A book about cycling carries the risk of being repetitive, but this one really does bring out the sights, smells, sounds, colours and eccentricities of each country covered. What I particularly like is that it doesn’t sugar-coat anything. It’s an honest account of the highs and lows of travel and the warts-and-all reality of human existence.

The book has a small section of colour photos showing some of the places the Watsons passed through and people they met. Poetry-loving Helen has included some epigraphs at the beginning of each chapter. I did enjoy some of these but I have to admit that a lot of them went over my head! The accompanying notes at the back were helpful.

The kindness of strangers

This is perhaps the most dominant and important theme of the book. The Watsons drink endless cups of tea with families who offer them hospitality along the way, willingly sharing their food and giving them gifts. Sometimes the generosity is overwhelming or becomes a source of guilt, especially when the Watsons have nothing to give in return or are unable to persuade people to let them pay for their share.

Wherever they go, the Watsons seem to be pursued by groups of children who are fascinated by them and want to ask questions. Occasionally they meet other travellers, but most of their interactions are with locals. Through these conversations we learn a lot about the daily lives and challenges of families who live along the Silk Road.

History, religion and culture

The depth of historical and ethnographic information given in Tea and grit is astonishing. I was amazed to learn just how many different religious and ethnic groups have populated the Middle East and Central Asia over centuries, all with their own languages, customs and traditions. The Watsons visit mosques and monasteries along their route, such as Mar Musa and Isfahan.

I enjoyed reading about the food and styles of dress in each country. Bread is particularly significant and sacred, with strict rules about how it is prepared and handled. Tea seems to be the favoured drink for all communities along the Silk Road.

Some of the little details surprised me, like the number of people who have gold teeth; one young woman even has a diamond embedded in a tooth.

Helen does her best to respect the cultural and religious traditions of the countries she visits, which can vary across borders. This helps her avoid the unpleasant consequences of breaching the law, especially in countries like Iran where the morality police can be brutally intolerant of women who, for example, do not wear the hijab correctly. Which leads me to the next theme.

The lives of women along the Silk Road

As Helen’s website puts it, Tea and grit offers ‘glimpses into the lives of women rarely given a voice.’ I definitely sensed a strong feminist perspective behind her narrative – and I shared it, deeply. I empathised with her anger at the liberties taken by men who thought it was fine to hit on her as a foreign woman, even in the presence of her husband. I felt for her every time she had to cover herself or be segregated because of her gender. I listened alongside her, in horror, at the tales of the volunteer midwife whose charity was helping girls as young as twelve.

The women of the Silk Road look after their homes and husbands, bear children and live with the fact that these husbands may have multiple wives and families. One woman explains that she is not allowed to speak to any man who is not her husband or a blood relative and admits that ‘life is very difficult’ as a result. Ed, meanwhile, is asked how much he had to pay for his wife and how many other wives or girlfriends he has, and the Watsons are frequently asked why they don’t have children. The contrast with our Western values of freedom and choice is stark.

It’s clear that some women act with obedience on the surface while harbouring other thoughts beneath. One confesses to being a closet atheist, while a group of girls admit to Helen that they would love to taste the forbidden ‘meat of the pig.’ I can only imagine the conflict of emotions she must feel, observing these ‘trapped and stifled’ women in their patriarchical, restrictive societies.

The Edinburgh tenement

Helen makes a number of references to Edinburgh life and ‘the Edinburgh tenement’ in a way that is not exactly positive. For example: ‘Human culture is not made safe in the hamlet or farmstead or Edinburgh tenement, but is woven on the Silk Road.’

On the face of it, this statement seems profoundly and tragically untrue. But I think that what Helen means is that humanity achieves nothing if we all just stay at home. Ideological and cultural differences are more likely to be resolved when we get together and chat over a cup of tea. This doesn’t just require an open and compassionate mind; it also takes guts to travel to places that take us out of our comfort zones. Perhaps that’s where the book’s title comes from.

This view can be challenged on many levels, of course – as Helen readily admits. Not everyone is in a position to make such journeys. It could even be claimed, with some validity, that they are merely a self-indulgence of the privileged.

Take Robert Louis Stevenson, for example, whose adventurous spirit Helen identifies with. Hailing from an affluent Edinburgh family, the writer famously travelled third class and submitted himself to voluntary hardship in order to leave behind ‘this feather-bed of civilisation… to find the globe granite underfoot and strewn with cutting flints.’ However, he eventually settled in Samoa and built himself a fine mansion, Vailima, where he was attended by twelve staff. I’ve visited Vailima myself and can confirm that it is a very fine feather-bed indeed.

On their return to Scotland, Helen and Ed agonise over the emerging crises in the lands they have left behind and what they can do to help. Helen’s involvement with refugees and homeless people is one way of coping with the conflicting emotions she now feels about their journey. Tea and grit ends with her welcoming a Syrian refugee family to a new home in Glasgow, arranged for them by one of her charities. Which just goes to show that sometimes, a Scottish tenement really can be a place of safety for human culture.

Final thoughts

Tea and grit is a wonderful book, written with love and passion by a true humanitarian. Given that cycling the Silk Road is not something I’d ever want to do, I really appreciate that there are people like Helen and Kate who have actually done it and written about it.

Helen’s book made me realise one thing that I’ve never considered before. Journeys like hers and Kates don’t just help to correct our mistaken impressions of other countries and their people. This works both ways – helping to correct their misinformation about us. Which can only be a good thing.

Of the two books, I enjoyed Kate’s most, largely because of her exquisite descriptions of the landscapes she was passing through, her deadpan humour and the banter between herself and Melissa. But that’s purely down to my personal taste and interests. I’d say that if you’re an environmentalist, you’ll love Kate’s book while if you’re more into human stories, you’ll love Helen’s. But I highly recommend both.

For those interested in Robert Louis Stevenson, I wrote about my visit to Vailima in my post on Samoa – 8 fun and relaxing activities for slow travellers. See also my post Writers retreats: 8 beautiful places, 8 incredible authors, which includes a description of his time in Samoa.

For more book reviews, see our Travel books and authors page.

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