The Wandering Lake: Into the Heart of Asia [Paperback]

Sven Hedin (Author)

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Product Details

Paperback: 312 pages
Publisher: Tauris Parke Paperbacks; 1st edition edition (Feb 2 2010)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1848850220
ISBN-13: 978-1848850224
Product Dimensions: 19.8 x 12.4 x 2.6 cm
Shipping Weight: 358 g
Amazon Bestsellers Rank: #526,508 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Review

Praise for Sven Hedin:

The Silk Road:

"The book is full of incident.. an entertaining account with picturesque descriptions and no less extraordinary personalities." --The Geographical Journal

My Life as an Explorer:

"No syllable is wasted…each sentence is as vibrant as the lilt of a Norse saga." --New York Times

Praise for The Trail of War:

"There is breathless excitement in this story. Suspense, action, all the elements of a good adventure story, only this is not fiction." --New York Herald Tribune

"Hedin’s lively account of his travails is related with the immediacy and urgency of a war correspondent." --John Hare

Product Description

The lake of Lop Nur, the "Heart of the heart of Asia," is one of the world’s strangest phenomena. Situated in the wild Chinese province of Xinjiang, Lop Nur - "The wandering lake"- has for millennia been in a perpetual state of flux, drifting north to south, often tens of kilometres in as many years. It was once the lifeblood of the great Silk Road kingdom of Loulan, which flourished in this otherwise barren region 2,000 years ago and its peculiar movements confused even Ptolemy, who marked the lake twice on his map of Asia.

Sven Hedin became captivated by the Lop Nur's peripatetic movements and for forty years his destiny was inextricably linked with that of this mysterious lake and the region surrounding it. His last journey to Lop Nur was in 1934. Travelling the length of the Konche-daria and Kum-daria rivers by canoe, Hedin embarked on his last Central Asian expedition and proved what he had always suspected - that Lop Nur did indeed shift position - and why. When he camped on its vast banks at night, Lop Nur was deep and full. Today, this once great lake - a a mighty reservoir in the desert - is nothing but windblown sand and salty marsh. The third in Sven Hedin’s Central Asia trilogy, The Wandering Lake is a gripping story of adventure and discovery but it is also a rare account of a now-vanished world; a masterpiece by one of history’s last great explorers.

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