It is a part-memoir part-essay recount of Albinia's Journey through Central and Southern Asia, following the course of the Indus River from Karachi to Tibet.

Due to the fraught political situation in Afghanistan and Pakistan at this time, Albinia pays particular attention to conflict and violence, contemporary and historical, occurring along the Indus.

As the river crosses multiple cultural and national boundaries, it often is part of the landscape in major regional and global conflict zones.

In speaking about Tibet, Albinia described it as a region which ‘chafes under its colonisation by China’, a vastly different place to India and Pakistan, which runs parallel to the main ideas of Empires of the Indus, the Indus River being a place where not only have civilisations been created, but powers and empires have fought wars to control this vital river system, and this highly productive and culturally diverse group of populations.

In his highly positive review in The Guardian, Kevin Rushby describes Albinia as a “determined writer and observant traveller with an ability to find the right person and listen to their story”.

[5] Robert Messenger, for Barnes & Noble, had similar praise for Albinia, identifying that the core of the story that she is trying to tell lies not in the history or culture of the places she visits, but in how these concepts, among others, are present and illuminating of the people she meets.

Dammed repeatedly… the river completely disappears in places, or slows to a puddle-like trickle.”[6] David Gilmartin, for The Historian, conversely identifies that Albinia’s “deep engagement with history” separates this book from what is typically expected of the travelogue genre.

Gilmartin also notes a less hopeful angle of the book, that the there is an “impression of loss” and the modern states in the region “offer little that is good in Albinia’s eyes”.

Gilmartin concludes that despite a deeper engagement with culture and history, Albinia’s view “shares something in common with many earlier imperial travellers”.