In the Empire of Genghis Khan

As a child, award-winning travel writer Stanley Stewart dreamed of crossing Mongolia on horseback. This is the story of how that dream was fulfilled by following in the footsteps of a 13th-century Franciscan friar.Eight centuries ago the Mongols burst forth from Central Asia in a series of spectacular conquests that took them from the Danube to the Yellow Sea. Their empire was seen as the final triumph of the nomadic ‘barbarians’. But in time the Mongols sank back into the obscurity from which they had emerged, almost without trace. Remote and outlandish, Outer Mongolia became a metaphor for exile, a lost domain of tents and horsemen, little changed since the days of Genghis Khan.In this remarkable book, Stanley Stewart sets off in the wake of an obscure 13th century Franciscan friar on a pilgimage across the old empire, from Istanbul to the distant homeland of the Mongol Hordes. The heart of his odyssey is a thousand-mile ride on horseback, among nomads for whom travel is a way of