I was so pleased when this book arrived through the letterbox, and began reading it immediately, because this is the second book from Heather Ellis and her first, ‘Ubuntu’, left me eager to know more of her continued travels.
Ubuntu told the story of this Australian’s 15-month solo exploration of Africa back in the early 1990s and was engaging from the off. ‘Timeless on the Silk Road’ really is a sequel, beginning just a couple of months after her arrival in London, where she presses her tired Yamaha TT600 into service as a dispatch hack, saving cash towards her overland ride back to Australia. There isn’t a mapped-out plan, as becomes clear, but the ancient Silk Road route through Central Asia makes the most sense, so she applies for 3-month Russian visa with the intention of studying the language in Moscow enroute.
So far so normal, but this is anything but a travelogue. It’s a page-turning rollercoaster and it’s beautifully written.
Something she learned to embrace in Africa was the constant help and kindness of strangers, and from the off it happens again. There are breakdowns of course, like rebuilding the clutch in the dirt under a cloud of mosquitos and there are illegal border crossings, but throughout there’s an Aussie ‘can-do’ attitude, even in the darkest of times and there are plenty of those. Heather is certainly not morose, but rather she’s a symbol of incredible physical and emotional strength as she struggles with the news of, and then medical complications associated with, being HIV positive.
This was 1996 and as she struggled on with failing health, making her way into and across China and south through Vietnam, she was unaware of new scientific developments into retrovirals. It is hard to comprehend how she coped, travelling alone with her emaciated body to remind her of her fate.
Had night-time not got in the way, and work the following morning, I would have read this book in one sitting and it’s been a very long time since I’ve done that. Truly compulsive, this is an excellent book.
Review by Paddy Tyson
ISBN: 978-0-6484969-0-8
284pp, 8 pages of colour images £12.99
Published by Phonte Publishing (2019)
Also available direct from the author.