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The Places in Between

3.84 of 5 stars 3.84 · rating details · 6,881 ratings · 993 reviews

In January 2002 Rory Stewart walked across Afghanistan-surviving by his wits, his knowledge of Persian dialects and Muslim customs, and the kindness of strangers. By day he passed through mountains covered in nine feet of snow, hamlets burned and emptied by the Taliban, and communities thriving amid the remains of medieval civilizations. By night he slept on villagers' flo...more

Paperback, 299 pages

Published May 8th 2006 by Mariner Books (first published June 4th 2004)

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Sep 11, 2007 Sean rated it 4 of 5 stars

In theory, it is easy to hate an Eton educated upper class Scotsman who decides it’d be a lark to walk across Afghanistan six months after the fall of the Taliban. The idea reminds me of the stupidity and adventurism I encountered when I went to Palestine with ISM. People vacationing in other people’s misery so they can go home and brag about it is not really my cup of tea.*

But after reading Stewarts book, I have to say it is extremely good. We learn next to nothing about Stewart here outside of...more

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Aug 25, 2007 Lisa rated it 3 of 5 stars

I found out about this charater from a magazine article at the time of the book's release. A scotsman who, for a variety of personal reasons not really revealed (a nice change of privacy in this world). begins walking across Afgahnistan.

He intersperses historical entries of a previous walker & conquerer between tales of hospitality and snow and destruction of antiquities.

I don't imagine I will ever have the opportunity to go to the places he writes about. So much of it was unfamiliar that th...more

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Mar 16, 2012 Lisa (Harmonybites) rated it 4 of 5 stars Recommends it for: Everyone

Shelves: 2012-around-the-world, biography, history, memoir, non-fiction, political, travel

Just weeks after the fall of the Taliban in January of 2002 Scotsman Rory Stewart began a walk across central Afghanistan in the footsteps of Moghul conqueror Emperor Babur and along parts of the legendary Silk Road, from Herat to Kabul. He'd find himself in the course of twenty-one months encountering Sunni Kurds, Shia Hazala, Punjabi Christians, Sikhs, Kedarnath Brahmins, Garhwal Dalits, and Newari Buddhists. He said he wanted to explore the "place in between the deserts and the Himalayas, bet...more Just weeks after the fall of the Taliban in January of 2002 Scotsman Rory Stewart began a walk across central Afghanistan in the footsteps of Moghul conqueror Emperor Babur and along parts of the legendary Silk Road, from Herat to Kabul. He'd find himself in the course of twenty-one months encountering Sunni Kurds, Shia Hazala, Punjabi Christians, Sikhs, Kedarnath Brahmins, Garhwal Dalits, and Newari Buddhists. He said he wanted to explore the "place in between the deserts and the Himalayas, between Persian, Hellenic, and Hindu culture, between Islam and Buddhism, between mystical and militant Islam." He described Afghanistan as "a society that was an unpredictable composite of etiquette, humor, and extreme brutality."

And he conveys all that in a way that only someone having taken such a journey, taken step by step, burning shoe leather, could have given us. This didn't impress me much at first, when he begins it I wasn't hearing much about Afghanistan I didn't know. But certainly by the time I got a third way through I was much more impressed. He had a gift for vividly describing the people and the landscape.

I have to admit, I found heart-breaking to read how dogs are treated in Afghanistan. It's said Muhammad once cut off part of his own garment rather than disturb a sleeping cat. Unfortunately, he didn't feel equal affection for dogs, and they're "religiously polluting." They're not pets, and they're never petted. A quarter of the way in his journey Stewart has a toothless mastiff pressed upon him by a villager and he named him Babur. The evidence of past abuse could be seen in missing ears and tail, and someone told Stewart the dog was missing teeth because they'd been knocked out by a boy with rocks. Stewart found the dog a faithful companion and said he'd call him "beautiful, wise, and friendly" but that an Afghan, though he might use such terms to describe a horse or hawk would never use it to describe a dog.

Then there was how Afghanistan's precious historical and cultural legacy was being destroyed. I think many Westerners certainly know about how the Taliban dynamited the giant Bamiyan Buddha statues over a millennium old because they considered them "idols." Just as profound a loss is discovered by Stewart in his travels. There is a legendary lost city, the "Turquoise Mountain" of the pre-Moghul Ghorid Empire. Archeologists couldn't find it--but when passing through the area, Stewart had found villagers who had, and were looting artifacts with no care for the archeological context or the damage they were doing to the site, selling the priceless wares for the equivalent of a couple of dollars on the black market. This is what he tells us about his discussion with the villagers about the lost city:

"It was destroyed twice," Bushire added, "once by hailstones and once by Genghis."
"Three times," I said. You're destroying what remained."
They all laughed.

Many a time I wished George W. Bush and Tony Blair could have taken that journey with Stewart and learned the lessons he did. He gives you a sense of the complexity and diversity of the culture and of Islam--and just how ludicrous and ignorant were the assumptions and goals imposed on the country by the invading Westerners. I certainly know that, especially as a woman, this wasn't a journey I could have personally taken, so I felt all the more privileged to look over Rory Stewart's shoulder as he took the journey across Afghanistan.(less)

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Nov 30, 2008 Carmen rated it 2 of 5 stars

Recommended to Carmen by: Julie

It is what it is: a guy walks across Afghanistan. What do you think happens?
A) he encounters very poor and poorly educated tribal/feudal lords
B) he encounters hostile, backward, cruel teens and militia and former soldiers
C) he walks 25 miles a day with not much to describe: rural Afghanistan is rural for a reason
D) all of the above

D, of course D. Well, at one point he does get a dog. Now Rory can describe how Babur likes to sniff and pee and roll in snow.

I give Rory some credit for what he cho...more

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Jan 02, 2009 Tracey rated it 1 of 5 stars

Rory Stewart walks across most of Afghanistan. I had high hopes for this book. Unfortunately, Stewart’s total disrespect for the customs of the people he meets along the way interfered with any enjoyment I might find in the story of his journey.

He feels a sense of entitlement towards their hospitality. He expects to show up and be provided with the best accommodations and the best food. That he does this in an area where people often have a difficult time feeding themselves is irresponsible.

Ste...more Rory Stewart walks across most of Afghanistan. I had high hopes for this book. Unfortunately, Stewart’s total disrespect for the customs of the people he meets along the way interfered with any enjoyment I might find in the story of his journey.

He feels a sense of entitlement towards their hospitality. He expects to show up and be provided with the best accommodations and the best food. That he does this in an area where people often have a difficult time feeding themselves is irresponsible.

Stewart is aware that dogs are offensive to most Afghans, but he simply doesn’t care. Even in more canine loving cultures, showing up with a large dog and expecting your hosts to accommodate it is nothing less than insensitive.

His walk is self-indulgent. Not only does he put himself at risk, he also knows that the tradition of hospitality will require some Afghans to undertake the same cold and dangerous conditions, despite the fact that these individuals will have to walk back to their villages and they do not possess proper footwear.

It was interesting to read this after recently finishing Three Cups of Tea. Stewart and Mortenson are complete opposites. Mortenson is a doer and clearly passionate and respectful of those he encounters. Stewart is a critical, judgmental chronicler.

I also got a little annoyed with his final high and mighty bit not accepting a ride for the last 71 km to Kabul as dangerous as it might be, because “I could not explain why I was determined to walk every step of the way…I did not feel I could give up so close to my goal.” Yet somehow he conveniently forgets that his goal of connecting his walks across Iran and Pakistan, as stated in the preface, has gaps from at least the Iranian border to Herat in the west and Kabul to the Pakistani border.

On a stylistic note, his frequent use of lengthy footnotes is annoying. Since he’s inconsistent about using them to expand on the historical context of his walk, they appear to be the result of lazy writing and poor editing.

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Aug 21, 2007 Jennifer Chen rated it 2 of 5 stars Recommends it for: South Asia hands and wanna be war zone journalists

Shelves: recentlyread

I'm not quite sure how to classify this book. It's not exactly a travel book, nor is it "current affairs." So perhaps I'm not judging fairly by seeing it air more on the side of travel than any other genre.

Anyway, a good travel book, in my opinion, should make you vaguely want to go to a place. Even if it's a wretched journey (as in In the Heart of Borneo by Redmond O'Hanlon). Even if the trip is perhaps beyond your financial or physical means. Even if you know what's being described on the pag...more

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Jul 31, 2007 Brandon rated it 5 of 5 stars

rory stewart, a scotsman, decided to walk across Afghanistan in January of 2002, on foot, by himself. if you'll recall, January 2002 was about 3 weeks after we installed the new government in Afghanistan. it was and still is a terribly unsafe place for westerners. as it turns out its even unsafe if you're an Afghani. Afghanistan is a country that is primarily still medieval: tribes based on ethnicity, religion, and location are constantly battling each other. this book is rory's travel diary of...more

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Mar 29, 2009 Mike rated it 3 of 5 stars Recommends it for: Students of Asia and war history

Shelves: culture, non-fiction, xcharity-2009

This Stewart guy has a pair of big brass ones-walking across Aghanistan in the shadow of the Taliban's defeat. He doesn't write as well as Robert Kaplan, another trekker of the world, but his stories are interesting nonetheless. There aren't many people in this story you want to meet but you get the clear description of one of the remotest parts of the world. Intriguing country. If I had the chance, I would like to visit the Hazara people and Bamiyan area. He paints an intriguing picture here. D...more

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Aug 17, 2010 Will Byrnes rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: non-fiction, adventuring, afghanistan

Stewart is an upper class Brit who sustains the English tradition of adventurism. He has worked in Iraq (and done other things I cannot recall here) and in this book he tells of his walk across Afghanistan. It was an interesting tale, one in which he offers a picture of what life is like for many of the locals. It is not a happy existence, having to survive on land that is not very productive, at the edge of poverty for a lifetime, subject to the whims of the local warlords and bandits. One thin...more

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Dec 23, 2008 Dorothy rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: travel-and-adventure

I started out thinking I was going to really, really like this book. It is about a fascinating part of the world and one that is extremely important to us - and important that we understand - Afghanistan. It's a travelogue of Stewart's walk across that country, from Herat to Kabul after September 11, 2001.

In the last couple of years, I have read Khaled Hosseini's fictional books about his native land and I found them very revealing and sympathetic. I had hoped for a broadening of that experienc...more

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Feb 24, 2008 Brett rated it 4 of 5 stars

Recommended to Brett by: book club

Shelves: foreign-relations, memoir

The Places in Between by Rory Stewart. It's a quick and easy read, and although it is not all that illuminating in many ways, it does give a snapshot of one person's fascinating journey through that country, and at least an idea about what it is like in the rural hamlets that comprise much of the population.

Rory Stewart never explains why it is he decided to walk across Asia. For whatever reason, he walked across India, Nepal, Iran, and other Asian countries. After the U.S. invasion of Afghanist...more The Places in Between by Rory Stewart. It's a quick and easy read, and although it is not all that illuminating in many ways, it does give a snapshot of one person's fascinating journey through that country, and at least an idea about what it is like in the rural hamlets that comprise much of the population.

Rory Stewart never explains why it is he decided to walk across Asia. For whatever reason, he walked across India, Nepal, Iran, and other Asian countries. After the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan in 2002, he took the opportunity to walk across that land as well (he had previously been denied access to the country by the Taliban). Stewart walks through the middle of the country, from Herat to Kabul, braving sometimes unfriendly villagers, treacherous mountain passes in the dead of winter, and various other obstacles. It's quite the concept, and yields a fair amount of striking moments. The prose is matter of fact and dry, though sometimes you can sense Stewart's sense of humor just below the surface.

However, the book does suffer from a sort of sameness. The belt of villages that Stewart walks through, and relies on to feed and shelter him, are all fairly similar. There is a familiar motion to finding the appropriate local chieftan to appeal to in each village and avoiding the same sorts of pitfalls each time. And though the journey must have been incredibly difficult, I rarely got the sense from the walking descriptions of exactly how tiring it must be. I believe that Stewart was in many ways lucky to survive at all, particularly when accounting for the dysentary he seems to always have, his lack of mastery of the language, and his travel through areas that had heavy support for the Taliban still.

One moment that was among my favorite in the book: Stewart has just come into another poor dwelling hoping to find nourishment. It is a typical mud hut with no power or amenities; it does, however, have a poster on the wall. "[The] poster showed a yellow convertible sports car parked outside a Swiss chalet with flower-decked balconies. Printed below in capital letters in English was: ANYONE WHO HAS EVER STRUGGLED WITH POVERTY KNOWS HOW EXTREMELY EXCITING IT IS TO BE POOR. Our host had bought the poster in Herat and asked me to translate it. I told him I could not understand the inscription." Irony of that passage aside, I think that would make an excellent T-shirt.

The main lesson to be drawn in my opinion from Stewart's work is that Afghanistan is not in any way to be mistaken for a uniform nation. The people do not think of themselves in national terms, and the ethnic, religious, and feudal ties are much more important to them than any action being taken supposedly in their name by a distant government in Kabul. The things that matter are of course the things that affect our day to day lives. It is a depressing book in the sense that virtually no one the author meets cares at all about human rights or really any ideal whatsoever beyond what it is to be a Muslim (indeed there is a very interesting chapter about how Bush and Blair misconstrue Muslim belief). Stewart walked a long and difficult journey, but as thinking about this book makes clear, the journey toward a humane planet will be much longer.
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Feb 01, 2008 Morgan rated it 5 of 5 stars Recommends it for: culture lovers

Recommended to Morgan by: myself!

Shelves: middle-east

The Places in Between by Rory Stewart has to be one of my favorite books. Rory has this gift to tell stories in such a brutally honest way that you find humor in even the most mundane life experiences. Although, I wouldn't generally categorize walking across Afghanistan 2 months after the Taliban fell, mundane. Yet, nothing about this book was breathtaking. Nothing was romantized, nothing placed on a pedestal. He spoke openly and honestly of all the people he met, those friendly, and those that...more

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Jul 24, 2007 Michelle rated it 2 of 5 stars

Shelves: book-club

I thought I already did a review on this book, but then realized it wasn't on my shelf at all. Anyway, read this book for my book club. We try to throw in some non-fiction once in a while. I think I was the only person who liked it/found it halfway decent. The meeting for this book actually opened with dead silence for a full fifteen seconds and then finally, "I didn't like it. It was awful," or something like that. Okay, so sometimes it was a bit boring, and Rory Stewart is not the best artist...more

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Jul 19, 2007 Dave-O rated it 4 of 5 stars

For Rory Stewart anthropology and the politics therein are all in the walk, quite literally. Having walked across huge stretches of land in Asia, Stewart set out in a somewhat of a mad trek across Afghanistan following the fall of the Taliban to follow the path of 15th-century emperor Babur. Stewart walks alone at times, at times with an armed escort and is greeted with a mix of ritualistic hospitality and outright hostility. His writing style is clinical; completely void of sentimentality, he n...more

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Jun 12, 2007 Jonathan rated it 3 of 5 stars

Starts off a little sluggish but once the narrator gets away from the more developed regions of the country the commentary becomes considerably more interesting. Although some of his writing style I found to be a bit fragmented at times he did a decent job of tying in a few different perspectives on his topic. As he travels he gives a brief history of the territory which I found insightful and very relevant to a better understanding of the inhabitants. I also appreciate that he made the effort t...more

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Sep 16, 2007 Colin rated it 5 of 5 stars

Really an amazing story... the author (a Scotsman) walks across Afghanistan in the midst of the fall of the Taliban and an American invasion, finding welcoming and not-so-welcoming Afghans in villages along the way, adopting a dog who becomes his travelling companion, and (somewhat amazingly) surviving his journey in tact.

The book is an unbiased account of reality on the ground, both in terms of Afghan sentiment towards the new central government, the reality of humanitarian relief work, and th...more

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May 16, 2007 Joel Barnes rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: thisyear

The story of a walk across afghanistan. It is not page-turner material nor a build-up to a dramatic finish, but it is extremely well written, and his clear and unsentimental evaluation of the people he meets will change the way you think about an unknown society (they are not just a people, but persons, some stupid, some wise, some mean, some kind). Particularly inspiring is the humility (almost indifference) with which Stewart describes his near death experience and his seemingly bottomless sup...more

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Apr 30, 2007 Sohrab rated it 1 of 5 stars Recommends it for: no one

Rory accomplishes something that no other travel diaries have done before him; he observes little of value or anything worth remembering from his experience. He loves walking and decides to walk through Afghanistan following footsteps of a Mongul king. As his journey progresses, he becomes more tired and increasing complains about people, food, climate, everything. Makes me wonder who forced him to do this? He complains about backwardness and violence in the Afghan places he visits. Is it any wo...more

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Oct 15, 2008 Brooke rated it 5 of 5 stars

This is a really amazing book. Rory Stewart approaches his post 9/11 walk (with no money!) through Afghanistan with a certain academic detachment. He keeps his journey grounded in the history of the country by tracing an ancient route and describes his interactions with the people that he meets with the distance of an anthropologist. Unlike in other travel books, Stewart does not glorify himself or anyone he meets. He also resists the temptation to villainize or judge even those who threaten him...more

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Apr 14, 2007 kendra rated it 2 of 5 stars Recommends it for: eh.

another bookclub hit/miss. hard to identify with since the author gives no rationale for walking across afghanistan. it seems to be not-journalistic, not-anthropological, not-political, not----anything. be prepared to cringe at every little drawing (yes, the author inserts drawings. of donkeys, of pottery shards, of structures. i'd be eternally grateful for this illustrated version of the journey if only the illustrations didn't seem to be done by a child of mediocre talent). but, like a second-...more

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May 13, 2009 Tim added it

There are some people you hear about and all you can think is, "Are you nuts?" Take Rory Stewart for example.[return][return]Stewart spent 16 months walking 6,000 miles across Iran, Pakistan, India, and Nepal. He decided that to make his journey complete, he must go back and walk 600 miles across Afghanistan. But he's going to do it alone. In January. Along the most hazardous winter route â�� a straight line through the central mountains. Roughly a month after the fall of the Taliban. Just two w...more There are some people you hear about and all you can think is, "Are you nuts?" Take Rory Stewart for example.[return][return]Stewart spent 16 months walking 6,000 miles across Iran, Pakistan, India, and Nepal. He decided that to make his journey complete, he must go back and walk 600 miles across Afghanistan. But he's going to do it alone. In January. Along the most hazardous winter route â�� a straight line through the central mountains. Roughly a month after the fall of the Taliban. Just two weeks after a new interim government is in place, at least on paper.[return][return]If that makes you wonder about Stewart's judgment, you also must question anyone who might think of calling The Places in Between , Stewart's tale of the Afghanistan trip, just a travelogue. Granted, it fits the definition of travelogue but it is so much more. This is a story about the effects of years of war on a country and its people. This is a story about the lives of real people. This is a story about almost primitive village life in a modern age. This is a story, largely non-ideological, about politics and policy.[return][return]Stewart's book, first published in Britain in 2004 and released in trade paperback in the U.S. in 2006, takes us on that journey from start to finish. Upon learning what he's doing, virtually every Afghan makes the same point: it's impossible this time of year. Or, more bluntly, "You will die." While those dire predictions did not come true, the 36-day journey was no cake walk. As Stewart notes in the preface,[return][return][T]here was no electricity between Herat and Kabul, no television and no T-shirts. Villages combined medieval etiquette with new political ideologies. In many houses the only piece of foreign technology was a Kalashnikov, and the only global brand was Islam.[return][return][return]Stewart followed a route used nearly 500 years before by Babur, the first emperor of the Mughal Empire. Excerpts from Babur's diary of his journey are both a companion and a resource for Stewart on his trip.[return][return]Stewart has other companions also, the first unwanted. As Stewart seeks to set off from Herat in western Afghanistan, the new government insists he go only as far as a provincial capital about halfway between Herat and Kabul. He also must be accompanied by two armed agents of the Afghan Security Service. Against his wishes, Stewart sets off with the two (soon to be three) men.[return][return]While he eventually convinces (pays) them to return to Herat and leave him to continue to Kabul on his own, Stewart is also occasionally accompanied or escorted by villagers along his trek. He even ends up with a full-time companion, a retired fighting dog "the size of a small pony" that is earless, tailless and has more gums than teeth. Stewart names him "Babur." Together they face the toughest part of the journey, through deep snows, blizzards and mountain passes. At times Stewart must almost literally drag Babur along. Yet even Stewart borders on giving up the journey â�� and his life â�� in deep snow about four weeks into his journey.[return][return]Stewart, a Scot who spent time with the British diplomatic service, knows a couple Persian dialects and Urdu, a language common to Pakistan and India. This enables him to communicate as he travels from village to village, relying upon that "medieval etiquette" for shelter and lodging. Many villagers are simply struggling to survive and are subject to the shifting and often unclear political or tribal alliances. While some villages appear relatively unscathed from years of warfare, others have been severely damaged or traumatized. The effects of war appear even in geographic descriptions. Afghans refer to many places and locations by some tragic or brutal event that occurred there, not by physical attributes.[return][return]Warfare's impact on cultural history is also apparent. The world was well aware the Taliban destroyed the famous Buddhas of Bamiyan. But it doesn't take politics or religious doctrine to lose irreplaceable pieces of heritage. The scrabble for existence is enough.[return][return]Balance of review at http://prairieprogressive.com/2006/07...(less)

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Nov 29, 2008 Wendell rated it 2 of 5 stars

It's an odd sensation in a travel book to be guided by a traveler who remains, for 300 pages, a cipher. Stewart reveals virtually nothing about himself or about his motive for undertaking his dangerous, difficult, and (evidently) unrewarding journey--on foot, no less. In fact, there's something distinctly bratty about Stewart's approach to the whole endeavor: he made the trip because he "wanted to," he repeats, and one can almost hear him stamping his foot; his evident lack of any need to suppor...more It's an odd sensation in a travel book to be guided by a traveler who remains, for 300 pages, a cipher. Stewart reveals virtually nothing about himself or about his motive for undertaking his dangerous, difficult, and (evidently) unrewarding journey--on foot, no less. In fact, there's something distinctly bratty about Stewart's approach to the whole endeavor: he made the trip because he "wanted to," he repeats, and one can almost hear him stamping his foot; his evident lack of any need to support himself for years at a time (he has bundles of cash at his disposal and, at the end of the journey to Afghanistan, returns to "his room" in his parents' house in Scotland) and his conviction that he should be fed and housed by strangers all the way across Afghanistan (but not accompanied or told where to go) have a distinctly elitist and slightly juvenile ring to them, which is not completely surprising given Stewart's parentage and social status (read his Wikipedia biography to get a hint of the manor to which he was born). The people that he meets, meanwhile, are with few exceptions entirely dreadful--dull when they are not outright dangerous, rude when they are not simply miserable, malicious and sadistic when they are not merely indifferent. Nor are the villages he visits anything to write home about, each one essentially identical to another in its revolting, raw-sewage-and-war-debris sameness. The landscape--which Stewart frequently cannot see because he is walking through blinding snowstorms--gets even shorter shrift, and Stewart only occasionally remembers to describe the quality of light at sunset or the shape of a mountain range. Indeed, one gathers that all of that was wholly secondary; his goal was the destination (Kabul), never the journey. (And that's perhaps no surprise, given how ghastly Afghanistan appears in Stewart's version.) The inclusion, meanwhile, of the numerous grade-school-quality sketches that Stewart inked into his journal is a blunder that undermines what little seriousness the book can lay claim to. Stewart hints occasionally that he's bedeviled by unhappy memories or regrets as he walks, but that's as close as he lets anyone come to a glimpse of what's taking place inside his head or of what his reactions are to most of the things that happen to him. That's a fatal flaw in a book that has so little else to offer the reader. If the Afghans are essentially unknowable and alien, if the places are unremarkable and monotonous, and if the narrator slowly disappear as he writes, the whole edifice of the project crumbles. Stewart's only tears in the book are for an animal and never for the human misery he traipses through, as much proof as anyone should surely need that he is (or was) a callow, overprivileged youth on walkabout and that _The Places In Between_ got published through high-society connections and not because Stewart had anything particularly meaningful to say. In a country as barren and forbidding as Afghanistan, the places in between are largely voids, and it is a void that Stewart's book most faithfully transmits.(less)

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May 05, 2013 Louise rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: afghanistan

It's amazing that anyone would even attempt this... walking across Afghanistan in the winter with a war going on. It is quite staggering, how many different ways he could die... war casualty, fights with officials, accidents, frostbite/exposure, starvation, food poisoning...

The desolate landscape is hard to envision, although the photos helped. How does one step forward in 4 feet of snow? Temperatures are cited well below zero at night, so besides unease provoked by the well armed people he's sl...more

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Apr 03, 2013 Anne Lopatto rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: nonfiction-read

Rory Stewart embarked on his walk through the war-scarred landscape of rural Afghanistan after that country had
suffered from two decades of war, including the Russian invasion and the ensuing civil war, and at the outset of the
Post 9/11 Coalition invasion. He found a countryside strewn with land mines, burnt-out villages and impoverished
people. But Stewart's encyclopediac knowledge of Afghanistan's complex cultural history and current ethnic and religious divisions, and his facility with local...more

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Feb 16, 2013 Mike Mcneff rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: non-fiction

I read this book four years ago and lent it to as many people as I could so they could better understand the folly of the current US strategy in Afghanistan. If President Bush and his advisors had been able to read this book before the invasion of Afghanistan, the US may have taken a different strategy than trying to create a "democratic" Afghanistan. The insights related by Prof. Stewart from his trek make it clear Afghanistan is not a candidate for western style democracy or modernization as t...more

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Feb 06, 2013 Flora rated it 2 of 5 stars

Shelves: books-that-take-me-to-other-countri, nonfiction

I'm starting to get the idea that maybe I don't do travelogues.

This book started out strong, with a lot of promise, as Mr. Stewart left Herat for last leg of a region-encompassing trek. The characters in Herat were great, and he writes enthusiastically about the characters he meets as he enters the mountains (and the shabby remnants of long-forgotten empires there). A little more than halfway through, however, the journey begins to wear not just on him physically (digestion seems to nearly stop...more

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Jan 21, 2013 Mitch rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: biographical, travel

The only way I would ever want to travel in Afghanistan is via someone else's book.

I've seen pictures of Afghani landscapes: often stony, bleak and barren. I thought maybe reading a book about someone else's walk across the country might present a different face of the country to me.

It did; a worse one.

First of all, Rory undertook the walk in the freezing winter through villages of illiterate people who often treated him with suspicion, brutality, greed and blatant dishonesty. He was punched in...more

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Dec 11, 2012 Reema Al-Medaires rated it 4 of 5 stars

It was a pretty good read. It gave me some good pointers on the current Afghanistan. Rory Stewart wasn't too keen to go deep into the historical aspects because according to him it does not represent the country today. I appreciated that actually.

Over the course of his trip the author encounters a lot of people. Some who would protect him, try to take advantage of him, follow him, try to shoot him, those who would host him and those who are reluctant to let him stay in their village in the first...more

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Nov 29, 2012 Bob Schmitz rated it 4 of 5 stars

People do strange things and this guy Rory Stewart a Scotsman WALKS from Herat to Kabul in the winter of 2002 by himself following the footsteps of Babur a 16th century descendant of Genghis Khan who conquered much of central Asia and set up basis for the Mughal dynasty. Rory speaks Farsi and asks for food and shelter in villages. He has a great knowledge of the history of the area and mixes this in with description of the places and people he encounters. He does not express political opinions a...more

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Nov 29, 2012 Babak Fakhamzadeh rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: memoires

Stewart entered the public eye in 2002 when he walked across Afghanistan. At the time, he seemed a bit like an idiot, as the media presented his journey as being a walk in Afghanistan and only Afghanistan, just after the American invasion of the country. However, turns out he walked across a much larger part of Asia, 6000 kilometers in total, over a period of 3 years.
As a professional, he's got an impressive track record, including British representative in Montenegro and Coalition Deputy Gover...more

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About Rory Stewart

Rory Stewart was born in Hong Kong and grew up in Malaysia. He served briefly as an officer in the British Army (the Black Watch), studied history and philosophy at Balliol College, Oxford and then joined the British Diplomatic Service. He worked in the British Embassy in Indonesia and then, in the wake of the Kosovo campaign, as the British Representative in Montenegro. In 2000 he took two years...more

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Quotes from The Places in Between

“I had been walking one afternoon in Scotland and thought: Why don't I just keep going? There was, I said, a magic in leaving a line of footprints stretching across Asia.” — 3 people liked it

“I thought about evolutionary historians who argued that walking was a central part of what it meant to be human. Our two-legged motion was what first differentiated us from the apes. It freed our hands for tools and carried us onthe long marches out of Africa. As a species, we colonized the world on foot. Most of human history was created through contacts conducted at walking pace, even when some rode horses. I thought of the pilgrimages to Compostela in Spain; to Mecca; to the source of the Ganges; and of wandering dervishes, sadhus; and friars who approached God on foot. The Buddha meditated by walking and Wordsworth composed sonnets while striding beside the lakes.
Bruce Chatwin concluded from all this that we would think and live better and be closer to our purpose as humans if we moved continually on foot across the surface of the earth. I was not sure I was living or thinking any better.” — 2 people liked it

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The Places in Between

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