Kingdom of Ten Thousand Things: An Impossible Journey from Kabul to Chiapas

By Gary Geddes

Book Overview

From war-torn Afghanistan, through the snow-capped Himalayas and across the burning sands of the Taklamakan desert, to a rapidly modernizing China and on to the Central American jungles: it is an impossible journey, but one that Gary Geddes eagerly undertook in order to retrace the voyage of the legendary 5th-century Buddhist monk Huishen. Geddes was long fascinated with stories of Huishen's life and travels: this Afghan holy man fled Kabul for China and may have crossed the Pacific to North America 1,000 years before Columbus.? The length and breadth of this expedition, and its difficulty, would have been amazing enough on its own, but Geddes's trip takes on an added dimension and poignancy due to its timing: he reaches Afghanistan one month before September 11, 2001 and arrives in China as the tragic events unfold. Along the way, Geddes encounters Afghan refugees, Pakistani dissidents, Tibetan monks, Buddhist scholars, a KFC outlet in Luoyang, mysterious cairns in Haida Gwaii, and ghostly remains in Mexico. As the Silk Road morphs into superhighways, ancient sculptures turn into military targets, Geddes glimpses, in the collision of past and present history, important clues for imagining a workable future.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1402743637
• ISBN13: 9781402743634
• Release Date: March 2007
• Publisher: Sterling Publishing (NY)
• Length: 383 Pages
• Weight: 1.30 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.2" x 5.9" x 8.2"

Customer Reviews

Fun read.

I found this book to be engaging as well and for lack of a better word... fun. To me, this book is not so much about making political statements or discovery, or about trying to provide a dissertation on the turmoil in asia or the americas. I took this as a journal of a man who was trying to find himself just as much he is trying to "rediscover" the steps of an obscure monk in history. If you take it as such, you would find that the things he describes are much like what you would see if you traveled to places like cambodia or indonesia and you would enjoy the book. I did not like the abrupt changes transitions into a recollections or choppy timeline. The descriptions of the characters he meets are certainly poignant and sometimes revolting. However, Mr. Geddes ought not think that all chinese women are crazy about him.

A Passionate, Engaging Journey

Explore Gary Geddes' emotionally charged, spiritual terrain with him as he passionately traces the pre-Columbian steps of Afghan monk, Huishen, to North America. The compelling poetic prose, humorous at times, subtly reveals much about the political concerns of China, the Middle East, and Central America while transporting the reader into a significant adventure that is both history lesson and pure escapism. Comparatively, think about doing the dishes while singing along to Bob Marley's "One Love/People Get Ready." It's at once engaging and liberating.