They pitch their trip as a chance to explore the reality and fiction of the borders they will traverse, as well as to contemplate how science might bring stability to some of the region’s most volatile places.Ĭarrying “ludicrous quantities of noodles” and Nescafé, they cycle through Turkey, Georgia, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, China, Tibet, Nepal, and India. Re-orienting to earth, she was still compelled by the planet’s most otherworldly places, eager to see the harsh hinterlands between Polo’s trading hubs.Ībandoning the lab, Harris reunites with childhood friend Melissa Yule to bike from the Mediterranean to the Indian subcontinent. Harris links the impulse for the journey to a youthful fascination with Marco Polo, when she would trace and study his route “as it laced and frayed past Constantinople, Trabzon, Erzurum, Bukhara, Samarkand, Badakhshan, Kashgar, Khotan, Cathay, each name an invitation to elsewhere.”Īs she grew older, her interest in the great unknown settled on Mars: She planned to become an astronaut, but midway through her Ph.D., realized the life of a Martian colonist was as much about confinement as freedom, and the path there involved a long detour to a windowless basement laboratory. Her retelling of the trip makes for a travelogue infused with science, history, and literature stretching from sea level to the roof of the world. Kate Harris’ debut work, Lands of Lost Borders, opens with a Virginia Woolf epigraph declaring, “We are forever mixing ourselves with unknown quantities,” which is the essential mission behind Harris’ plan to bicycle across Asia, tracing the ancient Silk Road.
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