Chris Aslan

Chris Aslan was born in Turkey and was raised there and in war-torn Beirut. After school, he spent two years at sea, and then lived in Central Asia for 15 years. First, was Khiva, a desert oasis in Uzbekistan, where Chris established a UNESCO workshop reviving fifteenth century carpet designs and embroideries, and becoming the largest non-government employer in town. He was deported as part of an anti-Western purge, and took a year in Cambridge to write A Carpet Ride to Khiva. Chris then spent several years in the Pamirs mountains of Tajikistan, training yak herders to comb their yaks for their cashmere-like down. Next came a couple more years in Kyrgyzstan living in the world’s largest natural walnut wood and establishing a wood-carving workshop. Since then, Chris has studied and rowed at Oxford and now divides his time between lecturing for the Arts Society, writing fiction and non-fiction in his mountainous home overlooking the sea in North Cyprus (where he is overrun by cats) and returning to Central Asia to lead tours whenever he can, having left a large chunk of his heart there. His latest book is Unravelling the Silk Road.

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