A memoir of the author's 1875 trek across Central Asia to the newly conquered Uzbek city of Khiva. The Russians had seized the city two years earlier and closed it to all European travelers. Burnaby's covert mission aimed to determine if the Russians were using it as a springboard for an invasion of India. Unknown to his superiors, who would have forbidden the venture, Burnaby rode for over a thousand miles across steppe and desert, struggling through blizzards and snowdrifts. Burnaby was ordered home by an alarmed government, and there he immediately sat down and wrote this best-selling account of his adventures