On the cover, a very furry camel eyes you judgingly, its half-lowered lids questioning your ability to handle the journey. So starts the voyage through Odyssey publications’ newest travelogue, which traverses “some 6000 miles of territory, often barely known or accessible, mountainous, marshy, icebound, and bereft of resources” in a piffling 544 pages. Yet don’t be daunted by the page count or the critical camel – the book flies by with over 400 handsome images, including photographs, maps and centuries-old artwork.

Written by Oxford-educated Classics teacher Bijan Omrani, this book is no Lonely Planet. Rather, it’s a historical travelogue composed from a huge collection of travel accounts that date as far back as the 16th century. The book traces the emergence of cross-cultural relations across the Eurasian landscape, from St Petersburg to Beijing. Recounting the inception of the Trans-Siberian railway and the Silk Road, it covers the technological advances, logistical quandaries, economic conditions and fortuitous accidents behind the laying of the tracks. Omrani accomplishes all this without missing an opportunity for first-class storytelling. With the rickety sound of a Chinese cart on an unpaved road or the taste of macaroni on a Siberian steamship, he successfully recreates the sensory experiences of bygone explorers. Reading this makes you think Omrani was there himself – or, for that matter, that you were there too.

There are also quirky anecdotes to be found, one such depicting the crackdown on cursing in 17th-century Moscow. Supposedly, secret agents would delve undercover in crowds and whip offenders on the spot. These singular moments characterise the book, and they are best captured by the host of photographs. While the colour-saturated snapshots are immediately transportive, their organisation can seem a bit schizophrenic. One page has a Russian folk dancer nearly in a leg split, directly beneath a sombre painting of an execution. While this at first appears ill-planned, it serves the tone of the whole book. The journeys of the time were perilously demanding – and staggeringly beautiful. Like a camel on the desert dunes, this guide will take you through the ups and downs, and leave you aching to take off.

Anna Calinawan