India (Lonely Planet Country Guide) - Asia

In January 2002 Rory Stewart walked across Afghanistan-surviving by his wits, his knowledge of Persian dialects and Muslim customs, and the kindness of strangers. By day he passed through mountains covered in nine feet of snow, hamlets burned and emptied by the Taliban, and communities thriving amid the remains of medieval civilizations. By night he slept on villagers' floors, shared their meals, and listened to their stories of the recent and ancient past. Along the way Stewart met heroes and rogues, tribal elders and teenage soldiers, Taliban commanders and foreign-aid workers. He was also adopted by an unexpected companion-a retired fighting mastiff he named Babur in honor of Afghanistan's first Mughal emperor, in whose footsteps the pair was following.

Through these encounters-by turns touching, con-founding, surprising, and funny-Stewart makes tangible the forces of tradition, ideology, and allegiance that shape life in the map's countless places in between.

Following in Babur's footsteps

"The Places in Between" is the chronicle of Rory Stewart's journey by foot from Herat to Kabul, accompanied by nothing else but the occasional villager or passing soldier and his local dog, named Babur. This is a fitting name because Stewart, who would later be appointed to an important government post in occupied Iraq (The Prince of the Marshes: And Other Occupational Hazards of a Year in Iraq), not only wants to explore the beautiful Afghan landscape but also study the traces of its history in the present. The original Babur was one of the few leaders in Afghan history who had united the whole territory and who considered it central to his empire, and he is particularly interesting because he left an autobiographical text which is remarkable for its honesty, its objectivity, and its insight into the norms of those days. With these two Baburs, knowledge of local language and customs, and a bag full of medication, Rory Stewart sets out to traverse the sublime deserts and snow-capped mountains of central Afghanistan.

The tale is very well written and makes for easy and highly compelling reading. It is a telling fact that he makes his journey, which consists in essence out of endlessly repeated harsh day marches from one village chief's tent to the next, interesting to people who have never even been near the area. Stewart is very nonjudgmental overall, probably in part because he is entirely reliant on the kindness of strangers (who are often as hostile as they are hospitable to travellers) in the classic manner of travel writing. The book sheds some light on the highly complicated chain of political and ethnic conflicts within Afghanistan - almost every Afghan male has fought in at least one, if not more, war in the country. It is clear that loyalties are usually not quite as clear-cut as one would like them to be in order to understand them: very often the same feudal lords who had opposed the Taliban later joined them, and sometimes Iran-supported islamists are the greatest enemies of local chieftains, and so forth. Stewart's book does not really delve into political analysis, but certainly shows 'ad oculos' what the real meaning of politics is in Afghanistan.

All this is not to say that Stewart is necessarily an entirely reliable guide. The American edition of the book indicates that Rick Loomis took pictures of him along the way, but having a cameraman along is not mentioned anywhere. Moreover, it is clear from the facts that Stewart has been in the British Army, knows Dari as well as local politics thoroughly, has been involved with the Kennedy School of Government and finally his later appointment as governor in the occupying government in Iraq, that it is highly likely that he is a spy of some sort. Given this fact, the fact that Stewart was allowed to undertake his trip at all is quite remarkable, and it does seem some strings were pulled to make it possible. Of course, he himself says nothing about this. The result in any case is an insightful and highly readable book that will appeal to anyone interested in Afghanistan.

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The place in between

Firstly, once I FINALLY received the product, it was in almost mint condition. So that was definitely a plus.
The downside, however, was that it took almost a month for it to come, no big deal if you're not in a hurry, though, extraordinarily annoying otherwise.

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Excellent Read

This book is a fascinating personal perspective of Afghanistan. Stewart allows his readers the opportunity to appreciate the human element of a war torn country as he tells his story of a journey on foot from Herat to Kabul. His insights are a refreshing take on the region and include the historical, political, anthropological, cultural and social strengths of this beautiful country.

I commend Stewart for his resilience and motivations to complete his walking journey through this politically unstable region of the world. This personal journey is an intriguing and inspirational story that will captivate anyone who reads it. This said, it is a book I own multiple copies of and have lent and given to a large number of friends, family and travelers- all of whom have also thoroughly enjoy it.

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Poignant and poetic

Mr. Stewart's writing style is not lyrical yet it can be said to be poetic, evoking emotions and images of the country through which he walked. All too often, the only images we have of Afghanistan are of war and repression of women. Walking across Afghanistan shortly after the fall of the Taliban, Mr. Stewart writes of a country re-awakening, full of hope for the future, and marked by the years of war...the changes to the culture, the scars on the land-scape. The book is all the more poignant given the subsequent abandoning of the country by the US to focus on Iraq and the inevitable decline in to chaos again. Mr. Stewart paints a vivid yet un-romanticised pottrait of the people, and changing culture of resilient peoples. ùit is not a book about politics or nation-building, but a bok about people and places...the you and I of another place. It is a must-read for anyone who has ever heard the name Afghanistan on the evening news.

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More about "the places" than the "in betweens"

Some things don't require explanation. People just do things, perhaps on impulse or some hidden private passion. But partaking in something as daring as walking for twenty months on foot through potentially dangerous territory would, it seems, necessitate some fundamental reason for doing so. But maybe not? In any case, Scottish journalist explorer turned Parliamentary candidate Rory Stewart set out on such a journey in 2001. His bipedal voyage was chronicled in "The Places In Between," which was hailed as a masterpiece and has helped put Stewart into the Academic (he now holds a chair at Harvard) and political spotlight (he is campaigning as a Conservative Party MP). Maybe his walk was inspired merely by the desire to "be somebody?" A sort of distinguishing for the marketplace? Whatever the reasoning behind it, the book's first line provides no illumination: "I'm not good at explaining why I walked across Afghanistan. Perhaps I did it because it was an adventure." He was thankfully good enough at explaining it to Afghans who allowed him to trudge through their volatile war-torn country. Stewart told them that he's retracing the steps of the 16th century Mughal Emperor Babur, that he's writing a book, that he's a history professor, he basically told them whatever he needed to tell them to maintain his quest. Sometimes, and he admits this openly, he lied to secure lodging or to avoid threats. One salient feature about his journey is the amount of tall tales told by Stewart and his companions along the way. One of Stewart's guides tells suspicious visitors that he is an American, and that his metal tipped walking stick can summon American helicopters at a moment's notice. They subsequently leave him alone. At another time a guide tells a host that Stewart is a doctor. More than once Stewart claims that he's an important personal friend of such and such powerful person, which allows him to scramble out of some tough spots. He wisely dodges some questions about his belief in Islam, but when pushed he gives a very Islamic interpretation of Christianity to questioners. This method never gets him in trouble. So apparently a fair amount of truth bending is required for a foreigner to pass through Afghanistan. This isn't surprising considering the state of that country.

Those seeking an ultimate reason for Stewart's journey may remain frustrated throughout the book. They will nonetheless encounter a highly charged and very readable narrative of what must have been a harrowing and perspective-building experience. The trip starts at Herat in western Afghanistan and grinds slowly through rough terrain all the way to Kabul to the far east. Along the way Stewart encounters the good, the bad, the beautiful and the ugly. He meets very few women, veiled or unveiled, and their sighting provides a litmus test for the tolerance of a region. Once he enters a room to see women fly into the shadows. He receives some of the best treatment in places where women appear openly in public. On the last leg of his journey, in Al-Qaeda and Taliban territory, he gets punched in the face and threatened with physical violence. Some amazing landmarks also appear, such as the mysterious Minaret at Jam. He falls down its spiral staircase. People at Jam tell him about excavations, mostly mercenary, in the hills surrounding the minaret. They find antiquities which lead them to believe that Jam was the legendary "Turquoise Mountain." In Chist-e_Sharif he sees the famous hollowed out domes. And at Bamiyan he sees the empty mountain crevices that once held the enormous Buddha statues destroyed by the Taliban. Those sites alone were probably worth the trip. In Dahan-e-Rezak he is given a maltreated dog he names Babur and who accompanies him until sickness prompts Stewart to ask Doctors Without Borders officials to drive Babur to Kabul. Stewart eventually catches up with him, but Babur's fate remains uncertain until the epilogue. The walk ends in ravaged Kabul where a local, mistaking him for an Arab, warns him that he just can't walk into Kabul "there are British and American soldiers ahead." He meets up with a well fed Babur in Kabul.

Though "The Places in Between" provides for great travel writing, it does not present a complete or even clear picture of Afghanistan or its people. The book is really about the author's journey. True, those who know nothing about the country will pick up some interesting tidbits, but this isn't an anthropology or an in-depth study in any sense of the word. It's a travelogue, and a highly entertaining one. Those looking for detailed analysis of Afghanistan should look elsewhere. Though he meets many interesting people, Stewart does not see or speak with enough people to consider his story representative of Afghanistan. He spends most of his time walking in unpopulated areas. Also, Stewart himself does not really emerge from the narrative. His focus remains on telling the story of the journey, not on personal introspection, though some of this does appear in smatterings. This somewhat belies the title, which evokes uninhabited landscapes where Stewart did in fact spend most of his time. But ultimately, the book spends more time on "the places" than on the "in betweens." Still, anyone looking for an intriguing story about a lone person in unknown territory will find a good read here. And perhaps we'll hear more about Stewart if he wins the Parliamentary seat and maybe someday he'll either figure out or reveal why he set out on this Quixotic quest.

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