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It's his accounts of getting between the various sites that I find funny!
The Road to Oxiana is more than a travel diary, indeed it isn't really a diary at all although it reads like one, as Byron actually took several years to produce something that appears to have been written at the time. This is one of the all time classic travel books. Like Patrick Leigh Fermors' A Time of Gifts, also about a journey undertaken in 1933, this is a book by a young man who was experiencing the world at a momentous period between the two wars. Byron was 28, Fermor was even younger at just 19 and the age difference has lead to a more polished and certainly more readable style.His humour and infectious enthusiasm for the countries he travels through and the people he meets starts with an apparent disaster with the non-arrival in Beirut of the experimental, and somewhat surreal, charcoal powered Rolls Royce that he had intended to travel in with his long suffering companion Christopher Sykes. We then continue on the road in a series of unpredictable and often ramshackle vehicles and an equal collection of unpredictable and ramshackle horses and ponies whilst continually dodging the Persian secret police who were desperate to find out what on Earth these men were doing.Not for nothing is the book called the Road to Oxiana, as the River Oxus, which is ostensibly the destination, only gets a brief mention at the very end although I won't spoil the story by saying how. No, this is a book of a journey and the care and time that Byron took over his choice of words draws the reader into the extraordinary life of Iran at the peak of the Peacock throne, from unbelievable wealth to grinding poverty. We travel the length and breadth of this huge and truly spectacular country, about two thirds the size of the European Union with enormous mountain ranges and vast deserts all faithfully illustrated by Byrons' pen.I first read the book whilst travelling around Iran myself and have returned to the book with increasing pleasure several times. I promise that you don't need to visit Iran to love this book although be warned it may make you want to go there as well.
QuoteThe Road to Oxiana is more than a travel diary, indeed it isn't really a diary at all although it reads like one, as Byron actually took several years to produce something that appears to have been written at the time. This is one of the all time classic travel books. Like Patrick Leigh Fermors' A Time of Gifts, also about a journey undertaken in 1933, this is a book by a young man who was experiencing the world at a momentous period between the two wars. Byron was 28, Fermor was even younger at just 19 and the age difference has lead to a more polished and certainly more readable style.His humour and infectious enthusiasm for the countries he travels through and the people he meets starts with an apparent disaster with the non-arrival in Beirut of the experimental, and somewhat surreal, charcoal powered Rolls Royce that he had intended to travel in with his long suffering companion Christopher Sykes. We then continue on the road in a series of unpredictable and often ramshackle vehicles and an equal collection of unpredictable and ramshackle horses and ponies whilst continually dodging the Persian secret police who were desperate to find out what on Earth these men were doing.Not for nothing is the book called the Road to Oxiana, as the River Oxus, which is ostensibly the destination, only gets a brief mention at the very end although I won't spoil the story by saying how. No, this is a book of a journey and the care and time that Byron took over his choice of words draws the reader into the extraordinary life of Iran at the peak of the Peacock throne, from unbelievable wealth to grinding poverty. We travel the length and breadth of this huge and truly spectacular country, about two thirds the size of the European Union with enormous mountain ranges and vast deserts all faithfully illustrated by Byrons' pen.I first read the book whilst travelling around Iran myself and have returned to the book with increasing pleasure several times. I promise that you don't need to visit Iran to love this book although be warned it may make you want to go there as well.
