The Sky Above, the Kingdom Below

Thomas Coryate has the curious honour of being one of the first Englishmen to travel simply for the experience of travel itself. He was neither a diplomat nor a merchant and did not live to see any profit from the written records of his travels.

In 2004, nearly four hundred years later, Daniel Allen set out on a bicycle to retrace the path of Coryate’s final journey from Turkey to northern India. It is a journey where everything upon the route has changed and yet somehow remained the same. Amongst the extremities of the terrain and threatening political climates of several countries, Daniel Allen finds individual instances of generosity and human kindness that reflect back across the centuries to Thomas Coryate’s original journey.

DANIEL ALLEN has travelled extensively in Europe and Asia and has worked on three continents, living in Sydney and in Hong Kong for several years.