Wayward: 13th-Century Silk Road History

Life on the Silk Road, around the year 1270.

Not the kings and battles. The road itself: the camel that carried the load, the caravanserai where it knelt for the night, the post rider changing horses, the price of salt, the dung fire, the letter that took a year to arrive.

Each documentary is built from primary sources — Marco Polo, William of Rubruck, Pegolotti's merchant handbook, Ibn Battuta, Chinese and Persian records — and checked claim by claim. Where the sources disagree, we say so.

This channel grew out of the Wayward trilogy, three historical novels set on these same roads, from Tabriz to Samarkand to Cairo. The research behind the books became these films.

New documentaries each week. Subscribe and walk the road with us.

Narration uses AI voices (ElevenLabs in the earliest episodes, Kokoro in later ones). Images and some motion are made with AI tools and reviewed for historical accuracy.