At the for books and exhibitions about the Silk Road, the overland trading corridor between Europe and China,

powered by Chinese silks, gunpowder and paper.

But not to be too crude about it, ships are bigger than camels. They can carry a lot more stuff and

India slap-bang in the middle between China, West Asia and Europe was at the center of a massive maritime trade powered by the

monsoon winds. What kind of cultural and intellectual impact did India have

outside of its borders? I'm joined by William Dole Rimple, author of the Golden Road, to discuss how India was at the epicenter of the ancient world. We talk about the Roman appetite for pepper, goodness gracious me, and how one lucky

rhinoceros stopped Jingus Khan from conquering the subcontinent.

Okay, William Dor Rimple, thank you so much for joining us today.

Thank you for having me.

Big pleasure.

So I had so much fun reading this book,

and as I got into it...

I had a lot of fun writing it actually,

including one of the nicest, six-month long

holidays of my entire life after COVID.

No one ever says they had a nice time writing a book.

Did you not have the pit of self-loathing?

Well, the nice bit, of course, is not actually writing writing the book but going off on the travel before writing.

But it was great because I spent kind of 20 years writing the same book about the East India Company and the moguls, four different books about that.

And this was a complete release into what has always been basically a hobby,

something I've loved but never actually specialized in and it's also sort of connected me with when I was a kid I used to love archaeology and I spent all my teen holidays on archaeological digs and then ended up going down another

rabbit hole and studying something that would have amazed my teenage

...