Empires of the Indus: Story of a River

The mighty Indus rises in the Tibetan mountains, flows west across northern India, and turns south through Pakistan. For millennia it was worshipped as a god and for centuries it was used as a tool of imperial expansion; today it is the cement of Pakistan's fractious union. In her debut travel book, foreign correspondent Alice Albinia chronicles an audacious journey through Afghanistan, India, Pakistan and Tibet, following the river upstream and back in time and taking the reader on a voyage through 2,000 miles of geography and more than 5,000 years of history.

"A magnificent book, a triumphant melding of travel and history into a compelling story of adventure and discovery."—Financial Times (London)