Follow a Nat Geo Photographer on His Silk Road Adventure | National Geographic

I'm John Stanley. I'm a photographer with National Geographic magazine here on assignment for part six of the Out of Eden Walk. We started in Africa in January 2013, and we've been walking overland, doing slow journalism. Now we're in Uzbekistan.

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We're out to look for the ancient caravan routes of Dilhi, a caravan stop from the 14th century. So, it's a third attempt to get to these ancient ruins. The first time was by motorbike, and that didn't work. The second was a tractor that didn't show up, and now it comes already stuck.

We also picked up a little friend. We seem to be making headway—about 30 kilometers to go, but we're running into a tragic situation here. We keep getting stuck in the snow, and the hill is right there. I don't know if we're gonna make it before the sun goes down.

Just literally seconds now to figure out our way back through the darkness. We've got thirty kilometers just to go back to the road, and then it was worth every bit of it. The RLC has retreated more than 200 kilometers from this point in Uzbekistan, and all that remains are the rusting beauty of ships still at their mooring but where the shoreline used to be.

We came here specifically because I wanted to come here over winter and hope there was snow on the ground—at least for the snowing. By chance, there is not as much snow as I was hoping, but at least there's a canopy.

One of the biggest challenges I have on these kinds of stories is how to make the visuals interesting. Many, many people have photographed this before, and the challenge is: how do you take it further?

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We're here in some otakon. I'm trying to make some pictures. I try to look for something interesting, see something interesting—especially in a place like the bazaar that's so well photographed. There's no smelting, and there's this fantastic torrent of water coming out.

I'm hoping it'll make something of a picture. All this is not actually knowing if any of this is going to work. I'm trying again to take the ordinary and hopefully find something airy.

Thanks for joining us, Julia. Good Aghori at working the film camera, and also Ozzy's public push the car.

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