Ultimate Journey: Retracing the Path of an Ancient Buddhist Monk Who Crossed Asia in Search of Enlightenment

In 629, a Chinese Buddhist monk named Hsuan Tsang left the Tang dynasty capital Chang-an (current-day Xian) and set off to India to see the principal shrines of his religion. His path was arduous, involving the passage of vast deserts and towering mountains, and the record he made of his years-long voyage served generations of travelers along the Silk Road until, finally, it was forgotten.

Richard Bernstein, a former New York Times correspondent in China (and now a book critic for that newspaper), follows Hsuan's trail in this outstanding narrative of his overland journey into the heart of Central Asia, a journey that takes him and the fortunate reader into places that few travelers are privileged to see--places, such as Kashgar and Samarkand, that have storied associations but that remain remote even in the age of CNN and fast jets. Though not without his fears and not without getting into a little trouble, Bernstein talks to just about everyone he meets along the way, pokes into little-known corners of history, and spins a wonderfully literate story of difficult travel that recalls such books as Robert Byron's Road to Oxiana and Bruce Chatwin's The Songlines. Anyone who has ever dreamed of seeing the Ganges River and the Taklimakan Desert will find much pleasure in Bernstein's pages. --Gregory McNamee