River Road to China

In the mid-nineteenth century, no one in the Western world knew the full course, or indeed the source, of the great Mekong River. In 1866, six Frenchmen set out to seek a trade route up the Mekong. During the two years that followed, they journeyed through more than 4,000 miles of unmapped territory, from the tropical heat of Vietnamese wetlands to the bitter cold in the mountains of south-western China. Their historic expedition is the dramatic subject of world-renowned SE Asia expert Milton Osborne's River Road to China.