Guided by a Kazakh aphorism—“To understand the wolf, you must put the skin of a wolf on and look through its eyes”—adventurer Tim Cope undertook a journey not successfully completed since the days of Genghis Khan: he traveled by horseback across the entire length of the Eurasian steppe, from the ancient capital of Mongolia to the Danube River in Hungary. It was an incredible six-thousand-mile, three-year-long trip across formidable landscape—and into the heart of the nomadic way of life that dominated this region for thousands of years, transforming Western Europe through its conquering armies.
Cope's trek takes him through wolf-infested plateaus, over glaciers and the subzero “starving steppe,” the scorching Kazakh desert, and the deep forests and treacherous mountains of the Carpathians. Alone except for a trusty dog (and a succession of thirteen horses, many stolen from him along the way), he encounters incredible hospitality from those who welcome him along the way, a tradition that is the linchpin of human survival on the steppe. Immersed in the land and its people, Cope is witness to the rich past and often painful complexities of the present still recovering from Soviet rule. On the Trail of Genghis Khan is a celebration and an elegy for the nomadic way of life—its freedom, its closeness to the land, its animals, and moods—and a narrative full of romance, intelligence, and drama.
