Ten thousand kilometres from the Silk Road to the Mekong: the route you can still travel overland, the way it was meant to be

Ten thousand kilometres across Asia, from the Silk Road to the volcanoes of the Pacific Ring of Fire. That is the route of a Spanish television journey with fourteen participants - but what is worth taking from it for anyone planning their own trip are the places themselves, because they stay there long after the last episode.

Xi'an - where the Silk Road began

China's Xi'an was an imperial capital under the name Chang'an. Today the southern part of the city is glass and skyscrapers - a 245-metre television tower with an octagonal shape inspired by traditional court lanterns, and a spherical natural history museum beside it. But the core is old: the seventh-century Wild Goose Pagoda, the Ming dynasty wall circling the historic centre, and the Bell Tower raised in 1384, one of the best preserved in China.

Below it lies the Muslim quarter with stalls and restaurants along streets like Sajinqiao, and next to it Yongxingfang, where specialities from all 107 counties of Shaanxi province are served. Outside the city is the thing most people come for at all - the Terracotta Army, thousands of soldier and horse figures buried more than two thousand years ago around the tomb of Emperor Qin Shi Huang. Farmers discovered them in 1974. Every figure has a different face.

Dunhuang - a crescent-shaped lake amid the dunes

Westwards the landscape dries out until you reach Dunhuang, an oasis in Gansu province. There sits Yueyaquan, Crescent Lake, tucked among the dunes of Mingsha mountain, with a traditional pavilion above the water. Dunhuang was a key station on the Silk Road for around two thousand years - a place where caravans carried not only goods, but ideas and religions. Nearby are the Mogao caves, carved into rock and filled with Buddhist paintings and sculptures layered over centuries.

Angkor - where jungle and stone stopped being two things

In Cambodia the dunes give way to stone towers. Angkor Wat, with its five towers reflected in the water at dawn, was built in the twelfth century by King Suryavarman II and originally dedicated to Vishnu - and that is only one part of the vast archaeological complex that was the political and religious centre of the Khmer Empire.

The strongest image is not there. It is at Ta Prohm, where roots as thick as a human body spill over the walls and hold the ruins in an embrace. And at Bayon, with the enormous stone faces looking out from the towers in every direction - the photograph everyone has seen and few can name.

Laos - the river dictates everything

The route then enters Laos, where stone yields to water and vegetation. The Mekong cuts the country from north to south and shapes its geography and its life - rice fields, mountains, villages and Buddhist temples along its course. Luang Prabang, the former royal capital under UNESCO protection, gathers all those layers: colonial houses, monasteries and roofs in strong colours. The Wat Xieng Thong temple, with its mosaics and stacked roofs, shows an architecture entirely different from the Chinese and Cambodian ones a few thousand kilometres earlier.

Outside the town are the Kuang Si waterfalls, where water falls through vegetation and creates a chain of turquoise pools. From there the journey continues towards the volcanoes of the Ring of Fire.

This is not a route for a ten-day holiday and it does not pretend to be. But it contains one thing rarely said when writing about distant destinations: almost all of it is linked by overland routes that existed before aeroplanes. The Silk Road is not a metaphor - it is a chain of cities reached one after another. Anyone with three weeks and some patience can still cover at least the Chinese section the way it was meant to be travelled.