[DOC] 25 Top Post-Grunge Songs Guitar Songbook: Tab. Tone. Technique. (Tab+) by Hal Leonard Corp. in Arts-Photography

Description

The Silk Road conjures images of the exotic and the unknown. Most travellers simply pass along it. Brit Chris Alexander chose to live there. Ostensibly writing a guidebook; Alexander found life at the heart of the glittering madrassahs; mosques and minarets of the walled city of Khiva - a remote desert oasis in Uzbekistan - immensely alluring; and stayed. Immersing himself in the language and rich cultural traditions Alexander discovers a world torn between Marx and Mohammed - a place where veils and vodka; pork and polygamy freely mingle - against a backdrop of forgotten carpet designs; crumbling but magnificent Islamic architecture and scenes drawn straight from "The Arabian Nights". Accompanied by a large green parrot; a ginger cat and his adoptive Uzbek family; Alexander recounts his efforts to rediscover the lost art of traditional weaving and dyeing; and the process establishing a self-sufficient carpet workshop; employing local women and disabled people to train as apprentices. "A Carpet Ride to Khiva" sees Alexander being stripped naked at a former Soviet youth camp; crawling through silkworm droppings in an attempt to record their life-cycle; holed up in the British Museum discovering carpet designs dormant for half a millennia; tackling a carpet-thieving mayor; distinguishing natural dyes from sacks of opium in Northern Afghanistan; bluffing his way through an impromptu version of "My Heart Will Go On" for national Uzbek TV and seeking sanctuary as an anti-Western riot consumed the Kabul carpet bazaar. It is an unforgettable true travel story of a journey to the heart of the unknown and the unexpected friendship one man found there.