When Philip Glazebrook boarded the Moscow train at the Hook of Holland in May 1990 he was beginning a journey he had been waiting a life-time to make. His desire was to see the cities of Samarcand, Bokhara and Khiva, where some of the most dramatic innings of the "Great Game" - the war from 1830 to 1900 between Russia and England over control of the approaches to India - were played out. But to reach it he had to travel through the disintegrating Soviet Union, with its shortages, queues, muggers and ever-obstructive bureaucracy. Travelling in the company of the ghostly heroes and authors of earlier accounts, this book attempts to create an original travel book. Philip Glazebrook is the author of "The Gate at the End of the World" and "Journey to Kars".