Tien Shan

• “Barrie thought I was mad even to consider reaching the Tien Shan Mountains of Kazakhstan or Kyrgyzstan without months of preparation and frankly warned me that in the face of the endless protocol entailed in securing visas and permission to visit the mountains, I would probably give up.”

  Simon & Schuster: Wildwood

• “He and his Oxford colleagues had written over 200 emails and letters in their original quest to reach the Tien Shan fruit forests.”

  Simon & Schuster: Wildwood

• “Fording the Shaydansay River again, we bumped, swayed and teetered our way higher up the valley to over 6,000 feet, then walked along the river to a grove of ancient Tien Shan birch and Turkestan maple trees that formed a gateway to an alpine meadow with a sacred spring at its centre.”

  Simon & Schuster: Wildwood

• “In the foothills and valleys of the Tien Shan range, the new apple found itself in a genuine paradise.”

  Simon & Schuster: Wildwood

• “During winter the Tien Shan Mountains were impassable in the snow, so traders took the long way round to the south.”

  Simon & Schuster: Wildwood

• “He talks about the great Soviet scientist Nicolay Vavilov, who was the first to suspect that the original ancestors of all domestic apples lived on the Tien Shan Mountains and in 19367 led the first botanical expedition into the wild fruit forests.”

  Simon & Schuster: Wildwood

• “I wake to sunlight and traffic and the brilliant surprise of the snowy tops of the Tien Shan Mountains, the Heavenly Mountains, that form the steep backdrop to the city to the south.”

  Simon & Schuster: Wildwood

• “A small group of species penetrated north-west through the fertile country that is now Gansu Province into the area that was to become the Tien Shan Mountains as they arose in the same geological upheaval that created the Himalayas.”

  Simon & Schuster: Wildwood

• “But when the snows melted in July, the caravans turned north and until the first snows in November travelled through the Ili Valley and the Tien Shan range via Almaty, passing through fruit forests on the way.”

  Simon & Schuster: Wildwood

• “Over lunch, he outlined the long journey of the domestic apple from the wild fruit forests of the Tien Shan along the so-called Silk Road to the west.”

  Simon & Schuster: Wildwood

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