About Alexandra Tolstoy
Alexandra Tolstoy first travelled to Central Asia in 1999, setting out with three companions to ride 5,000 miles of the Silk Road from Turkmenistan to China. The first people to travel this route by horse and camel since Marco Polo, the journey took nine months.
She later rode from Turkmenistan to Moscow’s Red Square and has travelled extensively across Kyrgyzstan, Mongolia, Siberia and Uzbekistan, building long-standing relationships with local people and a deep knowledge of these landscapes.
A fluent Russian speaker, she has written a book and presented the BBC documentary series Horse People with Alexandra Tolstoy, for which she lived with horse herders in Yakutia in midwinter at temperatures of -50°C, learnt to barrel race with cowboys in Montana, and rode the El Rocío pilgrimage in Andalusia.
Since 2002, Alexandra has run journeys through Kyrgyzstan’s Tien Shan mountains, following routes she has explored and developed over more than two decades. She recently produced and presented a documentary film in Kyrgyzstan with Dominic West and serves as a government tourism ambassador for the country, as well as an ambassador for the World Nomad Games.
Alongside this, she runs Tolstoy Dacha, a collection of objects shaped by her travels between England and Central Asia.