Empires of the Indus follows the historical ebb and flow of the Indus, one of the largest rivers in the world. Rising in the Tibetan mountains, sweeping west across northern India and south through Pakistan, the river has been worshipped as a god for millennia and for centuries used as a tool of imperial expansion. Five thousand years ago, a string of urbane cities grew and traded on its banks. In the ruins of these elaborate metropolises, Sanskrit-speaking nomads explored the river, extolling its virtues in India’s most ancient text, the Rig-Veda. During the past two thousand years a series of invaders, including Alexander the Great, Afghan Sultans and the British Raj, have made conquering the Indus valley their quixotic mission. For the people of the river, meanwhile, the Indus valley became a nodal point on the Silk Road, a centre of Sufi pilgrimage and the birthplace of Sikhism. Alice Albinia Empires follows the river upstream and back in time, taking the reader on a voyage through two thousand miles of geography and more than five millennia of history redolent with contemporary importance.