Bob Michael is among the few Americans who have traveled the Karakoram Highway, possibly the world's most spectacular mountain road. Starting in in the ancient Silk Road city of Kashgar in extreme western Xinjiang, China, the highway heads south to cross into Pakistan over the Khunjerab Pass, the highest paved road in the world. The road descends into the Hunza Valley, once a "lost kingdom," where the mountain scenery ascends from merely gargantuan in China to a crescendo of fierce sublimity in the Karakoram range, the home of K2. Shangri-La is, of course, fiction, but Hunza may be the closest actual approximation. BOB MICHAEL is a consulting petroleum geologist in Fort Collins. He has always had a fascination for extreme, end-of-the-earth places, and in particular deserts since falling in love with the Mojave in his Southern California childhood. Presentation Dates, Locations, and Times Tuesday, March 12, 2019 at the Old Town Library Thursday, March 28, 2019 at the Harmony Library