For more than 1,000 years, this trading route connected west and southwest China with India via Tibet and Burma. Goods, people and ideas flowed both ways, starting in the Tang Dynasty (AD 618-907) and reaching a climax during the Second World War, just a few years before the trail's demise in the 1950s. It rivaled the Silk Road in terms of its historical importance to China's communications with the outside world. Its dizzying river valleys and towering mountains made this the toughest, most dangerous caravan route in the world.The modern name of the "Tea & Horse Caravan Trail", taken from the Chinese 茶马古道 describes more than a single, well-defined route from A to B. It embraces a complex network of trails, all of which served to move trade across this vast region. But not only traders used these paths. In the seventh century AD, Tibetan troops marched along them to take control of areas of northwest Yunnan Province now known as Shangri-la and Lijiang. Buddhist monks headed west to study and collect sacred texts; many centuries later, Christian missionaries followed these treacherous routes into the most remote corners of China. In the 1930s, the revolutionary Red Army fled this way on its Long March. During the Second World War, when Japanese occupation had blocked other supply lines, vast caravans brought supplies into China from India via Lhasa. Bandits preyed on travelers throughout this history. In some places, they still do.