Illustrated lecture by Sudha Mahalingam, veteran traveler and experienced rallyist who will present perspectives from this journey

Chair:

Land-locked Central Asia, rugged, remote and relatively inaccessible, has straddled the silk route between Asia and Europe for several centuries. The region, home to some of the loftiest mountain ranges on our planet - Hindukush, Himalaya, Altai, Tien Shan, Alau, Pamir - has allured traders and adventure-seekers alike. In the last millennium, geography and history conspired to give this region a shared destiny from which they have disentangled themselves after the break-up of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s. What does the roof of the world look like today, twenty years after the countries of Central Asia got the opportunity to decide their own destiny?