Traces in the Desert

by Christoph Baumer, John Neville Hare (Foreword)

For five millennia, the peoples and cultures of East and West have met and mingled in Central Asia. For explorers and travellers it is a promised land, a region of white spaces on the map, forgotten cities and archaeological treasures. Christoph Baumer has spent a lifetime travelling through the countries of Central Asia, making extraordinary discoveries along the way. Traces in the Desert follows in his intrepid footsteps as he finds evidence of Indo-Europeans in the steppes of Western Mongolia, discovers lost oasis cities in the Taklamakan and unearths art treasures in Tibet. He embarks on a quest to find Genghis Khan’s long-lost tomb and has numerous, occasionally hair-raising, encounters with shamans, corrupt policemen and bandits. Enlightening and full of adventure, Traces in the Desert uniquely illuminates the hidden parts of Central Asia that have not just disappeared beneath the shifting sands, but also from the horizon of our memory.

Genres: History, Travel

240 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2008

Reviews

[Tim Chamberlain]

Following in the footsteps of his boyhood heroes, Sven Hedin (who was an acquaintance of his mother) and Marc Aurel Stein, Christoph Baumer's intrepid memoir recounts a number of diverse journeys made over many years to study the ancient sites of Central Asia. The lack of knowledge regarding many of these ancient sites even today is due to the extreme remoteness and inhospitable environments in which they are located. Hence, in the Taklamakan desert, Baumer occasionally finds himself the first European since Stein and Hedin to visit some of the sites which they first documented almost 100 years before. Managing to piece together information from their original accounts, he records how many of the sites have weathered or changed with the intervening decades, even making a number of important archaeological discoveries of his own, adding to and informing in greater depth the researches begun by his heroes.

Many of the journeys Baumer makes are arduous in the extreme, yet the efforts of travel in such remote regions are full of rewards which Baumer relishes to the full. Discovering a room full of bronze coins, uncovering buried murals which attest to different religions living side-by-side, or identifying the remains of a previously unknown military watchtower, Baumer excels at recounting the twin histories of the ancient cultures of the 'Silk Road' trade routes as well as their subsequent academic discovery and exploration in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Yet the book isn't just about long dead cultures, Baumer also finds colour in the lives of those communities living in these regions today. He describes the people he meets along the way, examining the extant rituals and customs, such as the pilgrimage or 'kora' around the sacred peak of Mount Kailash, which intimately connects them back to the cultures of their ancestors. I was somewhat perturbed though to read that Baumer was twice confronted by armed bandits (who seemed to be in cahoots with the local Police) on a road not too far from a place where I myself travelled only a few years ago! ... Yet whilst these tough conditions and hostile climates often cause extreme discomfort, as he and his travelling companions (and their camels) struggle with thirst, mechanical failures, extremes of heat and cold, bureaucratic paperwork and corrupt officials, or battle with ferocious sandstorms which in a matter of hours totally redefine the topography of the landscape around them, and, on one occasion, even suffering the ignominious irony of almost drowning in the desert, the magnificent sight of the Milky Way stretching across the clear desert night sky far from the light pollution of any human habitation prompts quite a lyrical and philosophically profound sense of personal reflection.

This book is a fascinating read for anyone interested in ancient history and archaeology in remote locations, it sits firmly in a grand tradition of adventurous travel narratives, like those of Hedin and Stein before him. Baumer himself is a very engaging academic, wholly enthused by his research and the Central Asia region, both past and present. I've heard him speak on his archaeological fieldwork at the Royal Asiatic Society in London, and, as such, this book certainly provides an excellent and personable introduction to the man and his work for both specialists and lay-readers alike.

[Tony Gualtieri]

These are summary chapters of several expeditions in the region. The author clearly knows the history of the area and his sense of adventure is palpable.