The Silk RoadThe Silk Road is not one road, but a series of routes that were used for trade and cultural exchange throughout Asia. They linked traders, merchants, soldiers, monks and other dwellers from China to the India, the Mediterranean and Egypt. It began during the Han Dynasty around 114 B.C. and extends 5,000 miles through land and sea.
Buddhist priests carried tea on camel caravans over the vast northern silk road routes through Mongolia to Russia, through the vast plains to the Mediterranean, and south to Burma and India.
Tea was certainly transported on the Silk Road, however, the Ancient Tea and Horse Caravan Road of Southwest China was probably used more exclusively for the transportation of tea. The crux of The Ancient Tea and Horse Road was located near the place where the only native tea plants exist, where Burma (Myanmar), China and India meet. It begins in the Sichuan and Yunnan provinces and runs through the center of tea production in China. It crosses the Hengduan mountain range, the deep canyons of the Yalong, Jinsha, Yangtze, Mekong and Nu Rivers. It spans the two highest plateaus of Chine, the Qinghai-Tibet and Yunnan-Guizhou and then south of the Himalayas into India.
Its name indicates it’s importance in the trade of tea and horses, but other products were traded along this route, as well. Horse caravans of tea, sugar and salt from Yunnan and Sichuan were traded to Tibet for mountain goods and horses. It was sometimes referred to as the Southern Silk Road of China, though silk was not one of the trade goods carried on this road.
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