Robbers attacking camel caravans, wars fought over silk and oriental spices, wild love stories in the middle of the desert: all manner of exciting legends have grown up around the Silk Road. The poetic name is a fairly recent invention for an ancient network of trade routes spanning the 6,500 kilometres that separate the Far East from the Mediterranean.
Some 200 years before Christ, the intricate network of roads gradually spread that enabled traders from Italy and Turkey to travel to China, crossing Syria, Uzbekistan and Mongolia to get there. They transported cardamom and curcuma, pepper and tea, bronze receptacles, porcelain and medicine over thousands and thousands of miles, travelling on foot or by camel through deserts with temperature differences of up to 75 degrees, across the snowbound passes of the Pamir Mountains at altitudes of 4,000 metres, and running the gauntlet of bands of thieves and highwaymen.