2007, Albinia made several trips to Pakistan, India, Tibet and Afghanistan, beginning the writing process in 2007. Albinia’s Distinction in South Asian history from SOAS was, according to her, the initial phase of her full-time study into the history of the Indus river. Having spent two years working in Delhi, and observing national debates over culture and history, such as the rewriting of educational textbooks, Albinia came to the realisation that the Indian subcontinent was had a deeper and more complex history than she had previously understood. Trips to Central and Southern Asia Albinia made several trips to Pakistan, India and Tibet, with a one-off side excursion into Afghanistan. When possible Albinia utilised a range of local contacts, often friends, to facilitate travel and to engage with local cultures, but spent significant portions of the various journeys alone. Due to the geopolitical isolation of Tibet and Afghanistan, Albinia travelled alone throughout most of these regions. In an interview with Newsline Magazine she describes her experience of travelling through Afghanistan during the time of American occupation. “It was not a problem at the time. I don’t know what it would be like now – different I think. If I had to go from point A to B and was passing through somewhere slightly tricky, I would just wear a burqa and no one would stop the car.” (Newsline Magazine, 2008). Albinia followed the curse of the Indus River upstream, from its headwater in Sindhu to its source in the Himalayas. As the river crosses multiple cultural and national boundaries, it often is part of the landscape in major regional and global conflict zones. At the time of Albinia’s journey, the two most notable conflicts in the region were ongoing, respectively the War in Afghanistan and the Kashmir conflict between India and Pakistan. A notable difference, according to Albinia, was the difference in cultural religiosity between India and Pakistan: “I think this showy religiousness came in at the time of Zia. At any rate, it was a great contrast to my experience of India, where I hardly knew anyone who was so religious. In Pakistan, even if someone isn’t particularly religious, they’d never say it out loud – you have to be really careful about these things.” Albinia’s varied experiences of India and Pakistan differed along these very particular cultural lines. In speaking about Tibet, Albinia described it as a region which