Silk Road Adventures explores an Intriguing Frontier…
Silk Road Adventures have been exploring the Silk Road through Asia since 1996. This area has become a passion for Pat Reedy and her husband Murray who are based in Greymouth in the South Island of New Zealand. They have organised hundreds of memorable Silk Road tours and since 2000 they have been part of the Women Travel Network.
Pat writes: In May we went off to the Caucasus for a nosey around Azerbaijan, Georgia and Armenia. That part world is a seriously interesting place, much more interesting than my research had suggested that it might be.
It wasn’t so much the turmoil of recent times that intrigued me but the realisation that the region has never been ‘stable’ at any point in its history. That really caught my imagination because I had not imagined the extent of the great and ancient empires of Caucasian Albania or thought much about the Christian Kingdom of Armenia that replaced it.
This was the historical context that underpins the region today and reinforces the cultures of its people. As it happens today, those people are either Muslim or Christian, as they have been for several millennia. It’s not a particularly happy relationship but for the moment it seems tolerable. With time and good will it might even improve.
The region is sprinkled with a rich built heritage, of monasteries, mosques, churches, forts and caravanserai, enough to paint a long and very vivid picture of invasions, trade and religious endeavours. This is very obviously a region squarely astride the cross roads between Asia and Europe with all the attributes of each. There are extensive vineyards, quaint euro-style villages, more monasteries and churches than you could shake a stick at, lovely ‘old city quarters’, plenty of green wooded countryside, grassland steppe and stunning ice covered mountain peaks.
We are returning in 2013, to some new places that need a ‘look see’ and more of the places that intrigued and surprised us this year. Call early if you would like to book a space on this unique Caucasus Silk Roads trip. This trip is just one of 20 run by Silk Road Adventures TOURS , and one of hundreds around the world on the Tour Calendar at Women Travel the World – Choose based on where you want to travel or when.
