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THE SILK ROAD AND BEYOND
Treacherous road in Imranli, Central Anatolia, Turkey (1978).
THE SILK ROAD AND BEYOND
Ivor Whittall
Revised and edited by Paul Rowlands
The Silk Road and Beyond
Old Pond Publishing is an imprint of Fox Chapel Publishers International Ltd.
Project Team
Vice President–Content: Christopher Reggio
Associate Publisher: Sarah Bloxham
Layout: Keystroke, Neville Lodge, Tettenhall, Wolverhampton
Photos by the author
Copyright © 2019 by Ivor Whittall and Fox Chapel Publishers International Ltd.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of Fox Chapel Publishers, except for the inclusion of brief quotations in an acknowledged review.
Print ISBN 978-1-912158-35-5
eISBN 978-1-912158-67-6
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
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CONTENTS
Chapter 1 From Small Beginnings
Chapter 2 Married to the Girl of My Dreams
Chapter 4 At Last, the Future Beckons
Chapter 5 Talk About a Vertical Learning Curve!
Chapter 6 Why Didn’t I Learn German in School?
Chapter 7 Things are Getting Better
Chapter 9 Turkey, Another World
Chapter 10 So This is the Desert?
Chapter 11 A Disaster Averted . . . Just!
Chapter 12 Job Done, Homeward Bound!
Chapter 14 Play by the Rules . . . or Else!
Chapter 15 Aydin, Not Quite the Magician After All!
Chapter 16 There’s Always Someone that Wants Assistance
Chapter 17 What a Bloody Fiasco!
Chapter 18 A Rather Testing Turkish Winter!
Chapter 21 An Epilogue . . . of Sorts
A long way from my small beginnings — travelling through Austria on my irst trip to Kuwait.
chapter one
FROM SMALL BEGINNINGS
According to my dear old mum, babies that would fit into a pint pot and were born prematurely weren’t always likely to survive in the pre-NHS days of 1946.
But not me! Here I was, early as usual, bawling my way into this world via Leek maternity home. Ivor, a small baby with a small name.
While still very young, my family, including my brand new baby sister Patricia, were uprooted to go and live next door to an Ansells
