LAURENCE MACKINreviews Out of Steppe: The Lost Peoples of Central Asiaand Southeast Asia on a Budget
Out of Steppe: The Lost Peoples of Central Asiaby Daniel Metcalfe. Hutchinson, £18.99
After attempting to teach himself Persian, Daniel Metcalfe sets off to Tehran to perfect his language skills. This is to be the first step in a wider journey that takes him into some of the remotest regions of Central Asia, where he pokes and prods his way through local culture and reams of bureaucracy to uncover some of the most obscure groups of people, from polygamous Jews in Bukhara to former nomads who have seen their world collapse with the disappearance of the Aral Sea. In Kazakhstan there are tenacious Russian Germans who seem to have stepped out of a German storybook, and the Yaghnobis of Tajikistan, whose existence is the essence of simplicity. The oppressive bureaucracy of many of these former Soviet states huddles in the corners of the page but never overshadows the story, and there is an honesty in Metcalfe’s approach that seems to pay dividends in the hospitality he receives, typically in a one-building village clinging to the edge of a long-forgotten mountain.
Southeast Asia on a BudgetRough Guides, £16.99
The regions in this book are a world away from those Metcalfe visits, having long established themselves on the western tourist trail. The southeast Asian tour is something of a rite of passage, and this book is a strong place to begin planning your route. It opens with a few colourful ideas to get you focused, then breaks into country by country chapters. There is nothing here on Burma, in keeping with a tourism boycott. There are few pictures in this guide – instead space is given to advice and day-by-day budget guidelines.
lmackin@irishtimes.com