The Silk Road Page #4

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let alone keep it and have

precious sips throughout the day,

to try and cover a pitiful

maybe five miles at most.

Because the nature

of the sand dunes is such

you can't go in a straight line

or very fast.

Then the sand just gets into

every part of your body

your nose, your eyes,

your ears just become blocked with it.

And your lips were split.

Your tongue was swollen and sticking

to the roof of your mouth.

Over the course of the next 5 days,

died from dehydration,

and one collapsed with exhaustion.

Finally Hedin and a local guide,

stumbled across footsteps

which they prayed would lead to water.

"Why should I die,

in the embraces of this deceitful

desert, for an unfaithful girl?

I will conquer the desert

and return home a hero

and all my people will see it

as a manly and courageous deed."

But the footsteps were their own.

They had walked in a circle.

The guide gave up, leaving Hedin alone

to crawl to a parched death.

He struggled on.

After 6 days without water,

Hedin finally found the Khotan river.

Luck and unbelievable perseverance

had saved him.

His whole life was characterized by

this will to achieve to prove himself,

to prove that he was not a failure.

The failure that he had become

when she turned him down.

Six months after his first disaster,

Hedin was back in the Taklamakan.

More determined than ever

to find the footsteps to fame.

One night, a local brought Hedin

some woodcarvings he had found

in the desert.

Mysterious objects which might lead

him to the lost civilization

buried beneath the sand.

"In spite of my misfortunes

the previous spring,

I was again drawn irresistibly

toward the mysterious country

under the eternal sand."

This expedition was different.

The water bottles were full,

the winter air cooler.

After a 5 day trek

into the Taklamakan,

Hedin finally came across

signs of an abandoned city.

He stopped and looked for

confirmation.

The evidence was undeniable.

He had found Dandanuilik,

a lost city of the Silk Road.

"No explorer had an inkling,

up till now,

of the existence of this ancient city.

Here I stand, like the prince

in the enchanted wood,

having wakened to new life a city

which has slumbered for

a thousand years."

Hedin's discovery was just

a beginning.

It started one of the greatest

archeological races of the 20th century.

Hedin's main contribution

to the Silk Road is that

he starts the race to discover

all the Silk Road sites.

He is never the person who figures out

the historical significance

of any given site.

But, he's the person

who gets other people to go

and figure those things out.

Using Hedin's pioneering maps,

famous archeologists

like Aurel Stein and Paul Pelliot

raced desperately to find other

lost cities of the Silk Road.

For these Europeans, it was much

more than a race for buried treasure.

It was a battle to appropriate

the history of an area

they hoped to control in the future.

The Silk Road, a forgotten ideal,

was once again a global concern.

Despite his success,

Hedin was still infatuated with Mille.

The proud Swede wrote her a letter,

wishing her happiness

with her future husband.

She was at that time

on vacation in Norway

and she had decided to

break up the engagement

because the one she really loved

was Sven Hedin.

So she wrote this letter to

Sven Hedin.

She went to the post office

to drop it in the post box

and the postman says oh here's

a letter for you from Sven Hedin.

And she got this message

that he wanted her to be happy

with her new husband.

And she thought that now

he has forgotten her.

So she got married

and he went to new expeditions.

Wounded and defiant, Hedin pushed

harder on his quest for fame.

Over the next 10 years,

this solitary,

driven man set out

to chart the earth's final frontiers.

He traveled more than a third

of the world's circumference,

mapping an area twice the breadth

of the United States.

He was the first to explore the mighty

Transhimalayan Mountains in Tibet,

the first to trace the source

of the Indus River.

I think that the ideal of Sven Hedin

was the strong and lonely man.

He said that the best thing with

the desert is that there are no people.

A real man was a lonely man.

His ideal was the lonely leader

who took his responsibility

and did great things for the nation,

for mankind.

As he put Central Asia and the

Silk Road back on the world's map,

Hedin became one of the most

celebrated explorers of the day.

On January 17th 1909,

Sven Hedin returned to Sweden a hero.

Sven's childhood dream had come true.

Thousands of Swedes were there

to greet him

just as they were for Nordenskiold,

But it still wasn't enough.

"The joy I felt to be reunited

with my parents and siblings

and to be greeted by

the old king was darkened

because she was not there

to greet me."

Alone in his moment of triumph,

Hedin craved adulation

on an ever larger stage.

It was a path that would ultimately

end in tragedy.

In 1914, Europe slipped

into world war.

As the conflict intensified,

Sven Hedin headed for the frontline

as a war correspondent

for the German high command.

There are many reasons why Sven Hedin

supported Germany throughout his life.

Germany, the scientific community,

always supported him.

He came from a background

in Stockholm

where one always were

close to the Germans,

so that was a natural thing.

But the really decisive factor

was his belief in geopolitics.

Like many Swedes, Hedin believed that

Germany was the only power

capable of protecting Sweden

from a Russian invasion.

When Germany lost the war,

allied countries like England and France

retracted the honors

they had bestowed on him.

Hedin was on the wrong side.

He would defiantly stay there

for the rest of his life.

Unperturbed, the explorer

focused on writing books

about his previous expeditions.

In 1920, Mille got back

in touch with him.

They had had some meetings.

She had children and she,

she wrote a letter to him.

That she could never forget,

forget him.

He was the love of her life,

and couldn't they get back together.

And he wrote back that you know

what is done is done.

Never turn back; 1,000 heavy steps

towards the goal,

but not one backwards.

Hedin returned to Central Asia:

the region he now

called his "frozen bride."

"She has held me captive

in her cold embrace,

and out of jealousy would not

let me love any other.

And I have been faithful to her,

that is certain."

Hedin's new project was to draw up

maps for a revolutionary new Silk Road

a massive motorway that would run

all the way to Vienna.

Hedin's pioneering maps were the basis

for the overland highway

that today links Asia with Europe.

"This highway should unite

two continents, Asia and Europe;

two cultures,

the Chinese and the Western."

Sven Hedin, the man who had rediscovered

the Silk Road 40 years earlier

had now given it a new lease of life.

The world famous explorer now

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