E mpires of the Indus is a magnificent book, a triumphant melding of travel and history into a compelling story of adventure and discovery. Alice Albinia has taken her obsession with the great river and wrought a captivating account of her explorations through Pakistan, Afghanistan, India and Tibet, taking us hundreds of miles upstream and back in time to the earliest days. She begins in Karachi in Pakistan, close to where the Indus enters the Arabian Sea. By the time she reaches the source of the river in Tibet, we have been drawn through an array of peoples, cultures, landscapes and stories.

The book is deftly structured: the further upriver we journey, the deeper into history we go. This approach does not, however, tie Albinia narrowly to the river itself, and she branches off on numerous adventurous diversions around the cultural watershed of the Indus. These forays, and her evident determination to track down little-known rock carvings or tribal villages, are enlightening. I was especially taken by her burqa-clad and highly illegal journey through the tribal badlands of Waziristan, for which she surely deserves a medal.