Word: stewart
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Stanley Stewart has written travel books on the Nile and the Great Wall. He spoke to TIME about his six-month journey through the empire of Genghis Khan...
...journey, Stewart discovers that his wanderlust is distinctly un-Mongolian. They are nomads, but their wanderings are circumscribed by traditions that have hardly changed for a millennium. It is Stewart who stands out as a badachir, a lone itinerant always searching for more. The Mongolians, who gave up the world, have long since accepted their fate...
...Stewart's sense of humor stands him in good stead during a forbidding journey that begins in Istanbul and then carries him through bleak Russia, bleaker Kazakhstan and into the finality of Mon-golia, a swept land that "made the sky ... seem crowded and fussy." Inspired by what he perceives as the Arcadian freedom of the nomads?the word Mongo-lian, he writes, "evokes the scent of grass and of fallen leaves, some atmosphere of twilight and horses"?Stewart plans to journey the 1,600-kilometer breadth of Mongolia by horse, not a good idea unless your last name...
...Stewart's mining of Mongol history is fascinating. Who knew, for example, that Khan's son supposedly considered massacring China's entire population? But the author's real strength is in sketching the characters he encounters: a Dickens-loving Russian pimp, a shy newlywed, a Mongolian librarian of Chekhovian futility. Far from the taciturn nomads one might expect, Mongolians are voluble talkers ravenous for news: Stewart disappoints his attentive hosts only when he fails to relay sufficiently lurid gossip...
...Time: How skillful a horseman were you when you decided to make this journey? Stewart: I'd ridden once before on a ranch trip in Wyoming. As it went on, I became a lot more accomplished and wanted more-and-more-eager horses. I actually rode up at each new camp in a grand style?galloped up and leapt off my horse?to let them know that I could handle their horses...