Knapsack Treks Book Review by Chan Joon Yee
Silk Dreams, Troubled Road by Jonny Bealby
This is not just a story about an exotic adventure on the Silk Road. It is a brutally honest tell-all that reveals quite a bit more of the deeper, darker thoughts and feelings of the writer than what the average romantic adventurer would.
Jonny Bealby was contemplating an adventure travel business in Islamabad, Pakistan when he met Rachel, the woman of his dreams. The whirlwind romance brought on an idea. Bealby planned to travel across Central Asia from Kashgar to the Caspian Sea with his love on horseback. Then, he got dumped and his whole world came crashing down. The dream would have remained a dream but word of his planned trip got out and Beably was pleasantly surprised by the offer he received from Lion TV.
Bealby needed a companion. She had to be adventurous, ride well and also keep the audience wondering if they had sex on the trip. He thought Sarah was the most suitable simply by virtue of the fact that she loved his books and met him at a pub even before the advertisement came out. Sarah had confessed that she had a boyfriend but insisted that it was not going to be a problem. Most of the people advising Bealby deduced that her willingness to go on such a long trip with a male stranger was a strong sign that her relationship was almost over.
Their journey started in Pakistan and the pair ran into all sorts of delays from landslides and cancelled flights. By the time they reached Kashgar, Bealby noticed that Sarah was already “on her own”, spending a lot of time emailing her friends back home. After a wrestle with the Chinese authorities, they bought their horses at the animal bazaar and drove them to the border with their health certificates. Bealby chose a horse called Kara which turned out to be another reminder of his poor choices. More than once, Bealby ran into serious problems when his horse performed poorly on the snowy passes. Worse, he noticed that Sarah seemed to be drifting further and further from him. She refused to share a tent with him and was more interested to flirt with their gold-toothed guide Murat than concentrate on the filming. She also completely ignored him when he faced problems caused by a bad horse.
From the mountains, the pair descended into the plains and valleys. They had much fewer problems with the elements, but the people and the bureacracy frustrated them. Anyone who could help them seemed to be out to fleece them. The next horse Bealby picked was no better than the first. Sarah seemed to be drifting further and further from him. In an outburst, she confessed that she missed her boyfriend and was homesick. Bealby declared the trip a disaster. Worst of all, the first batch of tapes they sent home was strongly criticised by producer at Lion TV. A lot of the problems they had avoided filming were too obviously missing from the story.
On top of that, their money was stolen when they got drunk at a wedding. Images of the beautiful mountains, the steppes, the exotic, historical cities, the deserts and Heavenly Horses they were riding towards the end didn’t matter anymore. This was the stark reality of going on such an ambitious expedition. On their last leg heading towards the Caspian Sea, they were both virtually crying into their camera, wanting to get out more than anything else. The film was rejected by Lion TV and BBC, but Discovery Channel bought it. Back home, Bealby and Sarah met up and were deeply apologetic towards each other, but they also seemed to have had enough of each other for the rest of their lives. Would things have been very different if Bealby had gone on the trip with Rachel or any of the other seemingly less suitable girls he interviewed? Nobody knows for sure. Many of us have gone on long trips or started businesses with our best friends, only to return as enemies.
© Chan Joon Yee
