Walking Home From Mongolia


Book Description

Starting in the Gobi desert in winter, adventurer Rob Lilwall sets out on an extraordinary six-month journey, walking almost 5000 kilometres across China. Along the way he and his cameraman Leon brave the toxic insides of China's longest road tunnel, explore desolate stretches of the Great Wall and endure interrogation by the Chinese police. As they walk on through the heart of China, the exuberant hospitality of cave dwellers, coal miners and desert nomads keeps them going, despite sub-zero blizzards and the treacherous terrain. Rob writes with humour and honesty about the hardships of the walk, reflecting on the nature of pilgrimage and the uncertainties of an adventuring career. He also gives a unique insight into life on the road amid the epic landscapes and rapidly industrialising cities of backwater China.




Cycling Home from Siberia


Book Description

“ It is late October, and the temperature is already –40 degrees . . . My thoughts are filled with frozen rivers that may or may not hold my weight; empty, forgotten valleys haunted by emaciated ghosts; and packs of ravenous, merciless wolves.” Having left his job as a high-school geography teacher, Rob Lilwall arrived in Siberia equipped only with a bike and a healthy dose of fear. Cycling Home from Siberia recounts his epic three-and-a-half-year, 30,000-mile journey back to England via the foreboding jungles of Papua New Guinea, an Australian cyclone, and Afghanistan’s war-torn Hindu Kush. A gripping story of endurance and adventure, this is also a spiritual journey, providing poignant insight into life on the road in some of the world’s toughest corners.




On the Trail of Genghis Khan


Book Description

The personal tale of an Australian adventurer's tragedy and triumph that is packed with historical insights. On the Trail of Genghis Khan is at once a celebration of and an elegy for an ancient way of life. Supported by an epic Australian and New Zealand Tour.




Nationalism and Hybridity in Mongolia


Book Description

Uradyn Bulag presents a unique study of what it means to be Mongolian today. Mongolian nationalism, emerging from a Soviet-dominated past and facing a Chinese-threatened future, has led its adherents to stress purity in an effort to curb the outside influences on Mongolian culture andidentity. This sort of nationalism views the Halh (the 'indigenous' Mongols) as 'pure' Mongols, and other Mongol groups as 'impure'. This Halh-centrism excites and exploits fears that Mongolia will be swallowed by China; it stands in opposition to pan-Mongolism, the view that links between Mongolsof all kinds should be strengthened. Bulag draws on an abundance of illuminating research findings to argue that Mongols are facing a choice between a purist, racialized nationalism, inherited from Soviet discourses of nationalism, and a more open, adaptive nationalism which accepts diversity,hybridity, and multiculturalism. He calls into question the idea of Mongolia as a homogeneous place and people, and urges that unity should be sought through acknowledgement of diversity.




Walking the Gobi


Book Description

In 2001, at the age of sixty-three, renowned adventurer Helen Thayer fulfilled her lifelong dream of crossing Mongolia's Gobi Desert. Accompanied by her seventy-four-year-old husband, Bill, and two camels, Tom and Jerry, Thayer walked 1600 miles in 126-degree temperatures, encountering fierce sandstorms, dehydration, dangerous drug smugglers, and ubiquitous scorpions. For more than sixty days Helen struggled to keep moving through some of the most inhospitable terrain on Earth, despite a severe leg injury. Without sponsors, a support team, or radio contact, hers is a journey of pure discovery and adventure. Walking the Gobi takes readers on a trip through a little-known landscape and introduces them to the culture of the nomadic people whose ancestors have eked out an existence in the Gobi for thousands of years. Thayer's respect and admiration for the culture of the Gobi and her gentle weaving in of natural history shine throughout this remarkable story.




A Story Waiting to Pierce You


Book Description

Revealing a forgotten truth in the present day, this account illuminates the crumbling political and economic structures of the West, shedding light on an ongoing and arduous search for a sense of purpose. Recounting a true story, this exploration tells of a wandering Mongol shaman who made a dramatic appearance around the Mediterranean centuries before the time of Christ. Highlighting how this nomad came as an envoy on a mission of purification, this study records how he met with a man who became tremendously influential in Western science, philosophy, culture, and religion: Pythagoras. The essence of Western civilization is said to have originated from this meeting, and this examination argues that today’s conflicts and tensions have stemmed from taking this monumental occasion for granted, forgetting that there must be a greater meaning to life than everyday efforts and struggles. Reflecting on a time when Eastern and Western cultures were one, this evocation contends that there is still a common spiritual heritage to all civilizations. A unique collaboration between the author and archaeologists, historians, and shamans from around the world, this document has the potential to change the future for all.




Bones of the Master


Book Description

In 1959 a young monk named Tsung Tsai (Ancestor Wisdom) escapes the Red Army troops that destroy his monastery, and flees alone three thousand miles across a China swept by chaos and famine. Knowing his fellow monks are dead, himself starving and hunted, he is sustained by his mission: to carry on the teachings of his Buddhist meditation master, who was too old to leave with his disciple. Nearly forty years later Tsung Tsai — now an old master himself — persuades his American neighbor, maverick poet George Crane, to travel with him back to his birthplace at the edge of the Gobi Desert. They are unlikely companions. Crane seeks freedom, adventure, sensation. Tsung Tsai is determined to find his master's grave and plant the seeds of a spiritual renewal in China. As their search culminates in a torturous climb to a remote mountain cave, it becomes clear that this seemingly quixotic quest may cost both men's lives.




Wild by Nature


Book Description

In 2010, Sarah Marquis embarked on a perilous journey: alone and on foot, she walked ten thousand miles across the Gobi Desert, from Siberia, through Thailand, to the Australian outback. Relying on hunting and her own wits, she traversed fever-haunted jungles and scorching deserts, braved harassment from drug dealers, the Mafia, and camp raids from thieves on horseback. Surviving dehydration, dengue fever delirium and crippling infection, Sarah experienced a raw and spiritual communion after three years of walking at the base of a tree in the plains of Australia. Through an inspirational journey, Wild by Nature explores what it is to adventure as a woman in the most dangerous of circumstances, and what it is to be truly alone in the wild.




Perfect Motion


Book Description

After the tragic loss of his younger brother, Jono Lineen experienced walking’s regenerative power firsthand. Grief-stricken and adrift, he set off on a 2700-kilometre solo trek across the Himalayas. He walked for months until his legs ached and feet blistered, and by the end of the expedition something had changed in him. He was stronger – not just physically, but psychologically and emotionally. What had happened? What had given him this feeling of peace; joy even? Determined to find out, he began investigating the science and history of walking and running, and discovered that there were fascinating reasons for his metamorphosis. Now, weaving together his own remarkable personal stories with research, Lineen reveals for the first time the powerful effect that even the shortest strolls can have on us. And why walking is what we’re made to do; it is our perfect motion.




The Long Walk


Book Description

The harrowing true tale of seven escaped Soviet prisoners who desperately marched out of Siberia through China, the Gobi Desert, Tibet, and over the Himalayas to British India.