What do you think?
Rate this book
A Personal Narrative Of A Journey To The Source Of The River Oxus, By The Route Of The Indus, Kabul, And Badakhshan
""A Personal Narrative of a Journey to the Source of the River Oxus, By the Route of the Indus, Kabul, and Badakhshan"" is a travelogue written by John Wood in 1841. The book details Wood's journey through the unexplored regions of Central Asia, as he sought to trace the source of the River Oxus. The narrative begins in India, where Wood embarked on his journey, and takes the reader through the treacherous terrain of the Hindu Kush mountains, across the Indus River, and into the remote regions of Badakhshan. Along the way, Wood describes the local people he encounters, their customs and traditions, and the challenges he faced in his quest. The book is a fascinating account of exploration and adventure, providing a unique insight into the little-known regions of Central Asia in the mid-19th century.This scarce antiquarian book is a facsimile reprint of the old original and may contain some imperfections such as library marks and notations. Because we believe this work is culturally important, we have made it available as part of our commitment for protecting, preserving, and promoting the world's literature in affordable, high quality, modern editions, that are true to their original work.
442 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1841
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
February 25, 2026
In 2008, Alice Albinia published Empires of the Indus, a fantastic travelogue along the Mighty India from its Mouth near Karachi to is source in Tibet. The book, highly acclaimed is more than a travelogue as the author passes through Sind, Punjab, Khyber, Afghanistan, India and Tibet recounting the geopolitics, geohistory and geocommerce of the river that has tantalized the western imagination and lent India her name. Exactly 167 years ago in 1841, a travelogue, which was part of the mission to Afghanistan undertaken by the British East India Company was published by Lieut. John Wood of the East India Company's Navy, and led by Lieut-Col. Alexander Burns. David Gilmartin, writing in 2011 for The Historian claims that even though Albinia enjoyed a deeper engagement with culture and history, her view shares something in common with many earlier imperial travellers. This point is quite congruous with Wood's "A journey to the source of the river Oxus".
Oxus, or Amu Darya is an arterial river in Central Asia rising in the Pamir Plateau in Afghanistan and flowing north before emptying into the Aral Sea. However, the river does not fall into the Aral Sea today, but has a mouth that's dried up. Aral Sea used to be the fourth largest inland water body on the planet, but the Soviets wrought the worst man-made ecological disaster in the 1960s when they diverted the waters of the Oxus and the Jaxartes (Syr Darya) to irrigate cotton farms, thus drying up the Aral by almost 90%, and making it the graveyard of the ships.
Ancient Bronze Age civilizations thrived along the Oxus, especially the Bactria-Margiana Civilization that date back to 2400 BCE. While, Oxus as a name is Latin, the classical antiquity refers to it as Chaksu or Vakshu in Sanskrit, or as Wehrod in Middle Persian. The name Amu Darya is a derivative of Amul (today's Turkmenabad, and formerly Chaharjoy), and Darya, which is a Sea in Persian.
When John Wood began his mission in 1836, the instructions were to ascend the Indus from near Karachi all the way up to Attock, to measure its navigability. It's this part of the journey, where cultural intercourses happen that reminds one of the much later written book by Alice Albinia. At Attock, Wood changed his direction, and moved into the region of Kunduz in Afghanistan. It was in the third year of the mission in 1838 that he discovered what he thought of as the origin of the Oxus in a region that is known as Wakhan, and today as the Wakhan Corridor, the place where Afghanistan meets China geographically. But, was this sheet of ice really the source of the Oxus? We will come to the conundrum in a while. Back to the narrative of Wood, which is supremely drafted with the keenest of observations on topography, hydrology, climate, commercial activity, culture, religion, history and politics, his expedition through the sublime landscape, yet haunted by miles upon miles of desolation, surrounded by strangers and yet guaranteed of security by the local rulers, brutes in the form of ferocious wolves, and faunal fellow travelers like the double-humped furry camels, horses, dogs and donkeys make for a vivid portrayal. Wood was one of the first Europeans (likely the first British) to set for in these remote parts of today's Pakistan and Afghanistan. Along the way, he established camaraderie with different ethnic groups of Central Asia, including the Uzbekistan, Tajiks, Hazaras, Kyrgyz, Kaffirs, and Kazakhs. He lodged and boarded with them, witnessing a culture totally alienating from the one he c was used to in Europe, or for that matter even as a naval officer in Bombay. The 450 odd pages have a few interesting anecdotes, like meeting with a chief whip claimed to a descendant of Alexander the Great.
The place which Wood claimed to be the source of Oxus was Lake Zorkul, which was later rechristened Lake Victoria in honour of her Majesty, though Wood himself preferred the local name. A paper was read as part of the Proceedings of the Royal Society in 1838 by Lt. John Wood himself, where he said,
"This celebrated river (the Oxus) rises in the elevated region of Pameer in Sinkoal. It issues from as sheet of water, encircled on all sides, except the west, by hills, through which the infant river runs; commencing is course at the great elevation of 15600 feet above the level of the sea, or within a few feet of the height of Mont Blanc. To this sheet of water, Lt. Wood proposes to assign the name of Lake Victoria, in honour of Her Majesty".
The chapter was as good as closed with the discovery, until George Curzon in 1896, used the definition of the source, which is the point farthest from the mouth as well as the point highest in the river system to conclude that the sheet of ice discovered by Wood was downstream from an ice cave under Wakhjir Pass, and thereby also neutralizing the claim made in the 1870s about Lake Chaqmaqtin as the source. But carthographically, none of these too meet the criteria set by the coordinates as discovered a century later. Expeditions since have also not been very convincing, though some seem to reach closer than others.
But why were so many expeditions carried out to determine the source, apart from scholarly, academic and geographical reasons? The rationale in the nineteenth century was concentrated on the Great Game, a nineteenth century rivalry between the British and Russian Empires in Central Asia with three potential to threaten the British colony of India and her interests in the Gulf. Coined by Arthur Conolly, and immortalized by Rudyard Kipling in his "Kim", the game was peaking in the second half of the century when the two adversaries signed the Anglo-Russian Agreement in 1873, that defined the Oxus as the northern border of Afghanistan and thus the dividing line between the British and Russian spheres of influence. The river's singularity as the topographical reference to border was reiterated in subsequent treaties. Delimiting these frontiers was problematic due to the dispute over the source of the Oxus, as this determined the primary tributary, and thus, even to the present day, the international border line. Accepting Lake Chaqmaqtin as the source would have stretched the Afghanistan border into today's Tajikistan, a point contended by the Russians and subsequently the Soviets until Tajikistan gained independence in the early 1990s. The British would have had problems accepting Curzon's ice cave, for it would have pulled the border closer to British India and today's Durand Line, a point still hotly debated between Afghanistan and Pakistan. This contraction could also have dealt a death blow to the erection of the Wakhan Corridor as a buffer zone between the two greatest empires of the nineteenth century.
I permitted myself some latitude and jumped the gun. Getting back to John Wood's highly engrossing work, his travels are not merely personal, but community driven, infused with a moral certitude, and sensibility that overcome the tragic ordeals he had to deal with, like the earthquake where he witnessed one-third of the population perish high on the Hindu Kush, or half the village flattened, slave traders that violate the Mohammedan teachings, bandits freewheeling the desolated landscape, or the inebriated and belligerant Frenchman. On the humane side, generous families, and their hospitality, despite poor in resources is a much frequent occurrence in the book that otherwise goes into the chills and the cold.
Amu Darya, a major lifeline of the Central Asian republics, cradle of ancient civilizations, birther, destroyer and keeper of dynasties, unfortunately, falls 200 km short of its original mouth, the Aral Sea, and dries out in Aralkum, the newest desert in the world at Kok Su. The Source, though, is yet elusive.
Oxus, or Amu Darya is an arterial river in Central Asia rising in the Pamir Plateau in Afghanistan and flowing north before emptying into the Aral Sea. However, the river does not fall into the Aral Sea today, but has a mouth that's dried up. Aral Sea used to be the fourth largest inland water body on the planet, but the Soviets wrought the worst man-made ecological disaster in the 1960s when they diverted the waters of the Oxus and the Jaxartes (Syr Darya) to irrigate cotton farms, thus drying up the Aral by almost 90%, and making it the graveyard of the ships.
Ancient Bronze Age civilizations thrived along the Oxus, especially the Bactria-Margiana Civilization that date back to 2400 BCE. While, Oxus as a name is Latin, the classical antiquity refers to it as Chaksu or Vakshu in Sanskrit, or as Wehrod in Middle Persian. The name Amu Darya is a derivative of Amul (today's Turkmenabad, and formerly Chaharjoy), and Darya, which is a Sea in Persian.
When John Wood began his mission in 1836, the instructions were to ascend the Indus from near Karachi all the way up to Attock, to measure its navigability. It's this part of the journey, where cultural intercourses happen that reminds one of the much later written book by Alice Albinia. At Attock, Wood changed his direction, and moved into the region of Kunduz in Afghanistan. It was in the third year of the mission in 1838 that he discovered what he thought of as the origin of the Oxus in a region that is known as Wakhan, and today as the Wakhan Corridor, the place where Afghanistan meets China geographically. But, was this sheet of ice really the source of the Oxus? We will come to the conundrum in a while. Back to the narrative of Wood, which is supremely drafted with the keenest of observations on topography, hydrology, climate, commercial activity, culture, religion, history and politics, his expedition through the sublime landscape, yet haunted by miles upon miles of desolation, surrounded by strangers and yet guaranteed of security by the local rulers, brutes in the form of ferocious wolves, and faunal fellow travelers like the double-humped furry camels, horses, dogs and donkeys make for a vivid portrayal. Wood was one of the first Europeans (likely the first British) to set for in these remote parts of today's Pakistan and Afghanistan. Along the way, he established camaraderie with different ethnic groups of Central Asia, including the Uzbekistan, Tajiks, Hazaras, Kyrgyz, Kaffirs, and Kazakhs. He lodged and boarded with them, witnessing a culture totally alienating from the one he c was used to in Europe, or for that matter even as a naval officer in Bombay. The 450 odd pages have a few interesting anecdotes, like meeting with a chief whip claimed to a descendant of Alexander the Great.
The place which Wood claimed to be the source of Oxus was Lake Zorkul, which was later rechristened Lake Victoria in honour of her Majesty, though Wood himself preferred the local name. A paper was read as part of the Proceedings of the Royal Society in 1838 by Lt. John Wood himself, where he said,
"This celebrated river (the Oxus) rises in the elevated region of Pameer in Sinkoal. It issues from as sheet of water, encircled on all sides, except the west, by hills, through which the infant river runs; commencing is course at the great elevation of 15600 feet above the level of the sea, or within a few feet of the height of Mont Blanc. To this sheet of water, Lt. Wood proposes to assign the name of Lake Victoria, in honour of Her Majesty".
The chapter was as good as closed with the discovery, until George Curzon in 1896, used the definition of the source, which is the point farthest from the mouth as well as the point highest in the river system to conclude that the sheet of ice discovered by Wood was downstream from an ice cave under Wakhjir Pass, and thereby also neutralizing the claim made in the 1870s about Lake Chaqmaqtin as the source. But carthographically, none of these too meet the criteria set by the coordinates as discovered a century later. Expeditions since have also not been very convincing, though some seem to reach closer than others.
But why were so many expeditions carried out to determine the source, apart from scholarly, academic and geographical reasons? The rationale in the nineteenth century was concentrated on the Great Game, a nineteenth century rivalry between the British and Russian Empires in Central Asia with three potential to threaten the British colony of India and her interests in the Gulf. Coined by Arthur Conolly, and immortalized by Rudyard Kipling in his "Kim", the game was peaking in the second half of the century when the two adversaries signed the Anglo-Russian Agreement in 1873, that defined the Oxus as the northern border of Afghanistan and thus the dividing line between the British and Russian spheres of influence. The river's singularity as the topographical reference to border was reiterated in subsequent treaties. Delimiting these frontiers was problematic due to the dispute over the source of the Oxus, as this determined the primary tributary, and thus, even to the present day, the international border line. Accepting Lake Chaqmaqtin as the source would have stretched the Afghanistan border into today's Tajikistan, a point contended by the Russians and subsequently the Soviets until Tajikistan gained independence in the early 1990s. The British would have had problems accepting Curzon's ice cave, for it would have pulled the border closer to British India and today's Durand Line, a point still hotly debated between Afghanistan and Pakistan. This contraction could also have dealt a death blow to the erection of the Wakhan Corridor as a buffer zone between the two greatest empires of the nineteenth century.
I permitted myself some latitude and jumped the gun. Getting back to John Wood's highly engrossing work, his travels are not merely personal, but community driven, infused with a moral certitude, and sensibility that overcome the tragic ordeals he had to deal with, like the earthquake where he witnessed one-third of the population perish high on the Hindu Kush, or half the village flattened, slave traders that violate the Mohammedan teachings, bandits freewheeling the desolated landscape, or the inebriated and belligerant Frenchman. On the humane side, generous families, and their hospitality, despite poor in resources is a much frequent occurrence in the book that otherwise goes into the chills and the cold.
Amu Darya, a major lifeline of the Central Asian republics, cradle of ancient civilizations, birther, destroyer and keeper of dynasties, unfortunately, falls 200 km short of its original mouth, the Aral Sea, and dries out in Aralkum, the newest desert in the world at Kok Su. The Source, though, is yet elusive.
September 12, 2025
A fascinating record of a unique journey, being the first english written record of much of the lands and practices he writes about. Wood brings a dry wit, and a rather competent air (although of course he would sound competent in his own book). I sincerely wish there was more published work by Wood as he seems a unique individual. If one enjoys this I recommend his second work Twelve Months in Wellington, even harder to locate (although on internet archive).
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews