The creation of settled life and the extension of it on the steppes was not simply a process of wave after wave of invader displacing one group and pushing them further down the line as most scholars present it. There is no doubt that this occurred, multiple times over the millennia, but it was much more complex than a simple wave washing over the vast empty spaces of Central Asia. And though it is a fascinating and largely true description if limited to Trans-Oxiana, my journey--and my dreams--was not limited to the land between the ancient Oxus and the Jaxartes, the modern Amu Darya and Syr Darya. My journey took me from the heart of the Byzantine Empire and the imperial capital of the Turks, Istanbul, along the southern shores of the Black Sea, through the Caucasus, across the oily Caspian, into Trans-Oxiana, heartland of the Timurids, and the first transmission site between East and West of paper, through the Ferghana Valley, breadbasket of Central Asia and birthplace of the first Mughal Emperor Babur, over the Torugart Pass into old Kashgar, skirting along the northern borders of the Taklamakan Desert to Dun Huang and the Jade Gate, the end (or beginning) of the Silk Road.

Throughout all of that space invasions were followed by counter invasions; walls of the mind and of the land were erected. The ‘other’ was hacked to death, invited into the hearth, enlisted into imperial armies, whispered into the ears of errant children, genuinely reviled and used as propaganda, civilized, bastardized, murdered, raped and praised. And still they came, in wagons, on horses and on foot. In ones, twos, threes; in families, tribes, armies and whole peoples, a plague of wagons, horses and people who chewed up the great sea of grass which spreads from Hungary to the border between China and Mongolia. This was the anvil human history shaped itself against, where the battle between settled, civilized societies fought back against that deep nomadic urge found in all of us. Here some of the most horrific scenes in history played out; where the most dastardly deeds were committed; where acts of loyalty and self-sacrifice were offered up to long forgotten gods; where the most beautiful songs sung; where palaces and temples to gods, all hundred thousand of them, were erected rising into the sun, the cobalt blue sky and golden seas of grasses spreading out into eternity, just like man's hopes, thinking only of the next horizon, the next pasture, the next home. This is the story of Central Asia.

God, I miss the road.