The Silk Road

The Silk Road or Silk Route is the series of interconnected routes that crosses Asia from China to Europe. The Caravans traveled the Silk Road for over 2000 years, and Chinese silk was reaching Rome before the time of Christ. Marco Polo followed this route, reaching China via Khotan and started his homeward journey with a ship, on the Maritime Silk Road from Quanzhou to Iran. The main route from China starts in Xian, goes West to Lanzhou and splits to avoid the Kalamakan desert into 2 roads, North via Korla and South via Khotan. The routes rejoin at Kashgar in the extreme West of China and goes into Central Asia, over a pass to Kyrgyzstan, then toward Tashkent, Samarkand and Bokhara, Southwest through Turkmenistan and into Iran, West to Baghdad, Damascus and Istanbul. It also had alternate routes, but the mentioned was the main one.