Ivor Whitall

The Silk Road and Beyond

Ivor Whitall

True accounts of one man’s long-distance trucking career that began in the late 1960s, these adventurous anecdotes are told by one of the first pioneers in long-distance trucking to the Middle East, Ivor Whittall. From traveling overseas to Kuwait, driving the desert trek between Jordan and Saudi Arabia, and surviving the infamously dangerous (and sometimes deadly) Tahir Pass in Eastern Turkey that has claimed the lives of truckers with its haphazard landslides and avalanches and tricky mountainous terrain, readers get a driver’s seat perspective to Whittall’s daring career. With 72 contemporary color photos of trucks, drivers, passports, visas, and custom forms, readers will be thrust into what it was like being a long-distance trucker in the 1970s. Full of disastrous near misses, border control mishaps, intense home sickness, mechanical failures, cultural misunderstandings, and so much more, this book will urge you to buckle up.