“Pure delight. There’s something utterly charming and absorbing about this honest account of a precarious adventure along the fabled Silk Road. Grit and tea indeed! Just like the great Freya Stark before her, Helen Watson sets out with an open mind and open heart – and brings news of places that even today are unfamiliar. This is a good old-fashioned journey of wonder through dusty lands, packed with mishaps and telling encounters”
——Benedict Allen, explorer and writer

“Tea and Grit embodies the essence and value of slow travel. Helen Watson notices and savours the details of ordinary people, ordinary places, from the embroidered dresses and jewel-coloured headscarves of Turkmen ladies and the golf ball-sized yoghurt snacks called kurut, to the armies of cleaning ladies scrubbing the streets of Tashkent and the open-top lorries overloaded with sheep on the Pamir Highway. Even on the hardest of travel days, she remains curious and determined, writing engagingly and with humour about the remotest parts of already little-visited destinations. Tea and Grit is a valuable addition to contemporary travel writing, especially for Central Asia”
——Sophie Ibbotson, Uzbekistan’s Ambassador for Tourism and the author of Bradt Travel Guides’ Uzbekistan and Tajikistan.

“A cycling odyssey packed with adventure, challenges, and at times, danger and uncertainty. It's also a story that celebrates the power of human connection and the extraordinary kindness of strangers. This beautifully written book - colourful, vivid and poetic - pays homage to the people of the Middle East and Central Asia, their multifaceted cultures and complex histories. A powerful, luminous and deeply personal tale”
——Helen Moat, Author of While the Earth Holds Its Breath

In 2009, while the US Government is hunting down Osama bin Laden in the Middle East, Helen Watson and her husband Ed set off on a cycling expedition from Glasgow to China. Driven by a desire to understand the world beyond the media portrayal of George W. Bush’s ‘Axis of Evil’, the couple pedal 15,000 km along the Silk Road – ancient trade routes that were undergoing rapid modernisation. Crossing deserts and mountains, minefields and military zones, they reach Muslim China via Syria, Turkey, Iran and Central Asia.
Plagued by sandstorms, overzealous officials and endless punctures, Helen and Ed camp with Bedouin, sleep in farmers’ houses, and are hosted by students and local dignitaries. They are waylaid with hundreds of cups of tea and interrogated about Western culture… and marriage. Soon after the couple return home, the Arab Spring breaks, and the world Helen and Ed have visited is plunged into war and unrest. Memories of the hospitality the pair received lead them to welcome refugees to Scotland through the UK’s first community sponsorship scheme – and to Helen writing about their adventure.

Tea and Grit: a Bicycle Journey along the Silk Road illuminates places rarely visited by Western travel writers. Through Helen’s evocative prose, visit Homs, the most embattled city of the Syrian War; Raqqa, the former capital of Islamic State; the Kurdish heartland of Eastern Turkey; the Islamic Republic of Iran; the secretive state of Turkmenistan; and Kashgar in Uyghur China. Through Helen’s eyes, gain privileged glimpses into the lives of women in parts of the world characterised by the oppression of female liberties. Join Helen and Ed as they forsake the white noise of everyday British life to focus on real decisions: where to sleep, what to eat, how to stay safe.

Rich in insight and compassion, Tea and Grit is a book about the rich and poetic cultures of the Silk Road, which have become imperilled by the aftermath of 9/11. Above all, Tea and Grit is a book about why it is more important than ever before to drink tea with the people we fear as strangers.

Born in Scotland and raised in Switzerland, Helen Watson (helenwatsontravelwriting.blogspot.com) is addicted to travel that is both physically and culturally challenging. In 2009-2010, she cycled 15,000 km from Scotland to China, inspired by the hospitality of people along the Silk Road – and later dismayed by the subsequent refugee crisis following the Arab Spring. Watson has captured the experiences in her first book: Tea and Grit: a Bicycle Journey along the Silk Road. She has previously won travel-writing competitions in the Telegraph, twice been shortlisted for the Bradt Guides/Independent on Sunday New Travel Writer of the Year Award and contributed to Bradt’s Tajikistan guidebook. Living in the Scottish Highlands with her travel companion and husband, Ed, she works in wildlife conservation.