The Route of Trans Asia Expedition

Bangkok, our home base

From California we plan to ship the two vehicles and camper trailer to Singapore and from there drive up the Malay Peninsula to Bangkok which becomes, more or less, the home base for the Trans Asia Expedition. The main objective after leaving Bangkok is to enter Cambodia and visit the ancient Khmer ruin at Angkor Wat, once one of the greatest cities of Southeast Asia. As great as the city was, the Khmer's suddenly and with no known cause abandoned their splendid city. Trans Asia Expedition will cross Cambodia over supposedly the same route, through the Lake District, in which the Khmer fled.

We will explore temple ruins at
Angkor Wat, Cambodia

We shall enter Vietnam from Cambodia and head north to the border of China, visiting en route some of the battle sites of the Vietnam War.

Hopefully the roads in Vietnam will
have improved since Stephens was
a War Correspondent there

After entering China we head northeast following the coast and visit the ports from which Chinese Admiral Zheng He set out in his fleet of junks in 1407 in what was probably the biggest armada in history to sail the seas.

We will seek out the back alleys
of Old Shanghai

In Shanghai we will explore Old Shanghai and see what is left of the past, those infamous 1920's and 30's. From Shanghai we follow the coast northward, cross the Yangtze, visit the Gorge, and then continue on to Qingdao. Stephens served as a US Marine after WWII in Qingdao, when it was known as Tsingtao, and from his experiences wrote his book "Take China, The Last of the China Marines." Tsingtao is noted for its German architecture, as it was once a German Treaty Port in the late 1800s, and, of course, for it's famous Tsingtao beer. Steve is anxious to return to recapture his past, and Brian to spend his leisure at the Tsingtao Brewery.

From Tsingtao we continue to the north to the easternmost section of the Great Wall of China. We will follow the wall westward on its 2,500 mile journey across north China to the border with Mongolia and Tibet in the west. The wall was constructed to keep out the marauding Tatars, or Mongolian Horde. Genghis Khan conquered China from Mongolia. The expedition will travel from Beijing into Mongolia and seek out some of the horsemen whose ancestors made up the Golden Horde.

Genghis Khan conquered China from Mongolia.

We return to Beijing and visit the site of the Peking Man and delve into the mystery of the missing bones of the oldest human fossil ever uncovered, and which were believed to have been stolen by the US Marines at the time Stephens was in Beijing after the war.

The site where the bones of Peking Man
were found, and lost again

The walled cit of Xian,
where the Silk Road begins

After leaving Beijing we pick up both the the Silk Route and Marco Polo Trail and follow them from Xian and cross into Tibet and drive to the capital at Lhasa. From Tibet we cross over the Himalayas into Nepal, stopping at the capital Kathmandu. We exit Nepal over the Rajpath, the highest mountain pass in the world, and enter Benaras, India's holy city on the Ganges. We follow the Ganges to Calcutta and then head north to the Northeast Frontier and drive to Thimphu, the capital of Bhutan. Stephens will seek an entrance permit from the ex-prime minister, an old friend.

Back in India we cross the Sunderbans, home of the Bengal tiger, into Bangladesh and drive to Chittagong and from there ship the vehicles and trailers to Penang in Malaya and make our triumph return to Bangkok.

The Tribhuwan Rajpath, the highest mountain pass
in Asia which our expedition must cross