Silk Road

A panoply of cultural treasures, spanning the herbs, flowers, oils and balms of the Romans, the Byzantines, the Mediterranean, the Levant, Northern China, Eastern Europe, Iran, the Bulgar-Kypchak, Mesopotamia, the Crimean Peninsula, Anatolia, Antioch, and North Africa.

 The Silk Road evokes images of caravans traveling to exotic places, of exotic treasures of all kinds, from silk (of course!) to spices, from pottery to perfume, from ivory to tea. And some things were brought along unintended, like the bubonic plague. 
As the map shows there was not one silk road, there were several different routes. In this map only the routes over land are shown, but there were maritime routes also. The Silk Road started with the Chinese trade of silk during the Han Dynasty (206 BCE-220CE). But it was a significant factor in the development of the civilisations of China, India, Ancient Egypt, Persia, Arabia and Ancient Rome. Alexander the Great's expansion of his empire into Central Asia has been important for the connection between East and West. In the 13th and 14th century the Mongol Empire kept the Silk Road together. 
When the Mongol Empire fell apart, Europeans searched for new routes to China. On of those efforts was made by the Dutch explorer Willem Barentz, who tried to find a northeast passage and had to spend a winter in Novaya Zemlya, known by the Dutch as Nova Zembla. In 2011 a Dutch movie was made about this voyage Nova Zembla. 
In 1990 the last link of a railway route along the Silk Road was completed. Now a train can travel from Duisburg in Germany to Chongqing in China in only 13 days. (And wouldn't it be wonderful to make that trip?)
Much more information about the Silk Road can be found in this wikipedia page. With so many cultures and countries being connected, so many centuries of existence, the Silk Road can not be condensed in one blog post (nor in one wikipedia page, but there is quite a lot there). 


And so is the scent like the road, exotic, complex, with many different ingredients that blend into one adventure.