This post was, originally, going to feature China and Tibet. Then, I realized, it might be interesting for whomever may be reading The Global Rambler's ramblings to learn how those early travels were planned and organized before Google and the Web.
For instance, the next Post, #56, will feature China: Traveling the Silk Route (1982). Research began in 1980, soon after the Men's Annapurna I Expedition - Around Annapurna Fund Raising Trek was completed. (As a side note, we saw no other trekker during the 1979 Around Annapurna Trek until, toward the end, we reached the trail turnoff into the Annapurna Sanctuary).
What do you do, today, when you want to visit a particular country or location. You ask Google to tell you what he/she knows about the place. You can, even, ask Alexa, Siri or one of the other "smart" devices sitting on your desk. You might visit Google Earth to have a look at the area. Next, you might do a search for travel descriptions from Mountain Travel/Sobek, Geographic Expeditions, Wilderness Travel, Wildlands Travel, Lindblad Travel, Overseas Adventure Travel, etc. to read what they have organized in that particular country or location of interest. Further, you can find someone's book that describes their recent travels in that region either at the library or download it to your reader.
But, what did one do before Google - Search, Map and Earth. Before the Web. Before MTS, GeoEx, WT, Lindblad and OAT had been there to develop a travel experience. Yes, there was such a time and it was not that long ago.
Maps
"Before Europeans reached the Pacific the Marshall Islanders were making stick charts. Sticks were lashed together with fibers to depict prevailing winds and wave patterns; shells or coral were inserted at the appropriate places to represent islands."
"The earliest direct evidence of map making comes from the Middle East, where archeologists have discovered several maps inscribed on clay tablets.... One of the earliest of these clay maps was found at Nuzi, in northern Iraq, and dated 2300 B.C., the age of Sargon of Akkad,"
For instance, the next Post, #56, will feature China: Traveling the Silk Route (1982). Research began in 1980, soon after the Men's Annapurna I Expedition - Around Annapurna Fund Raising Trek was completed. (As a side note, we saw no other trekker during the 1979 Around Annapurna Trek until, toward the end, we reached the trail turnoff into the Annapurna Sanctuary).
What do you do, today, when you want to visit a particular country or location. You ask Google to tell you what he/she knows about the place. You can, even, ask Alexa, Siri or one of the other "smart" devices sitting on your desk. You might visit Google Earth to have a look at the area. Next, you might do a search for travel descriptions from Mountain Travel/Sobek, Geographic Expeditions, Wilderness Travel, Wildlands Travel, Lindblad Travel, Overseas Adventure Travel, etc. to read what they have organized in that particular country or location of interest. Further, you can find someone's book that describes their recent travels in that region either at the library or download it to your reader.
But, what did one do before Google - Search, Map and Earth. Before the Web. Before MTS, GeoEx, WT, Lindblad and OAT had been there to develop a travel experience. Yes, there was such a time and it was not that long ago.
Maps
"Before Europeans reached the Pacific the Marshall Islanders were making stick charts. Sticks were lashed together with fibers to depict prevailing winds and wave patterns; shells or coral were inserted at the appropriate places to represent islands."
"The earliest direct evidence of map making comes from the Middle East, where archeologists have discovered several maps inscribed on clay tablets.... One of the earliest of these clay maps was found at Nuzi, in northern Iraq, and dated 2300 B.C., the age of Sargon of Akkad,"
The Mapmakers, John Noble Wilford (The Map Idea)
And Books - Explorer's Books, History Books, Early Traveler's Books
"On a June morning in 1842, in the Central Asian town of Bukhara, two ragged figures could be seen kneeling in the dust in the great square before the Emir's palace. Their arms were tied tightly behind their backs, and they were in pitiful condition. Filthy and half-starved, their bodies were covered with sores, their hair, beards and clothes alive with lice. Not far away were two freshly dug graves. ... Stoddart and Conolly were merely two of the many officers and explorers, both British and Russian, who over the best part of a century took part in the Great Game, and whose adventures and misadventures while so engaged form the narrative of this book. The vast chessboard on which this shadowy struggle for political ascendancy took place stretched from the snow-caped Caucasus in the west, across the great deserts and mountain ranges of Central Asia, to Chinese Turkestan and Tibet in the east."
"The
famous monk Xuanzang (602-664) traveled the Silk Road during this
period. He began his trip from Chang'an (today's Xian), passed through
the Hexi Corridor (the area west of the Yellow River), Hami (Xinjian
Region), and Turpan and continued westward to India."
"On a June morning in 1842, in the Central Asian town of Bukhara, two ragged figures could be seen kneeling in the dust in the great square before the Emir's palace. Their arms were tied tightly behind their backs, and they were in pitiful condition. Filthy and half-starved, their bodies were covered with sores, their hair, beards and clothes alive with lice. Not far away were two freshly dug graves. ... Stoddart and Conolly were merely two of the many officers and explorers, both British and Russian, who over the best part of a century took part in the Great Game, and whose adventures and misadventures while so engaged form the narrative of this book. The vast chessboard on which this shadowy struggle for political ascendancy took place stretched from the snow-caped Caucasus in the west, across the great deserts and mountain ranges of Central Asia, to Chinese Turkestan and Tibet in the east."
The Great Game, Peter Hopkirk
China Highlights, The History of the Silk Road in China
"Like many Europeans who would eventually follow their wake, they tried, even as they charted the outlines of the major geographical features, to make sense of a place considered holy by millions of people, Buddhist and Hindu alike, a sacred landscape anchored by Kailash, a mountain so revered that to tread on its slopes would condemn the trespasser not only for this like but for a thousand to come. For Hindus, Mount Kailash is the divine seat of the god Shiva and his wife, the goddess Parvati. It is the point where the sacred form of the Ganges, the holiest of all rivers, spills from the heavens and runs invisibly through the silk of Shiva's hair before slipping into the earth to emerge from the mouth of a glacier, found some 140 miles to the west. For Buddhists, Kailash is the site in legend of the Buddha Chakrasamvara, who sweeps up Shiva and his circle into the embrace of a gentle mandala of bliss. It is famed in history as the place of the great victory of the Tibetan yogi Milarepa, a mystic wanderer of the twelfth century who, through the magical powers that accrue to supreme Spiritual purity, flew effortlessly to the summit of the sacred mountain, thus vanquishing his great rival, Naro Bhun Chon, a priest and shaman of the pre-Buddhist Bon religion, and securing forever the Buddhist path in Tibet. It was Milarepa who established homes in the mountains encircling Kailash for the five hundred Buddhist saints who had achieved enlightenment, and whose prayers are still heard by the pilgrims who gain spiritual merit by circumambulating the mountain, through prostrations, one body length at a time.
Into the Silence, The Great War, Mallory, and the Conquest of Everest, Wade Davis
