In this period, located at the "center of world" India became a great player in the first global economy. As the spice routes and the silk roads opened up, Indian civilization grew, enriched by contact and exchange. Beginning in Kerala. Michael Wood journeys on an old wooden sailing boat plying its trade from South India to the Gulf, and tells how the spice trade with Rome opened India up to the world.
The film then shows how north India was opened up to the world at the same time, as merchant's caravans began to use the Silk Route between China and the West.
The medieval walls and revetments of the ancient city of Harappa.
Journeying out to Merv in the deserts of Turkmenistan, Wood tells the story of the forgotten empire of the Kushans that ruled India in the first centuries CE: one of the greatest and least known empires in history whose story can only now be told with the recent decipherment of their language. Coming down the Khyber to Peshawar in Pakistan, Wood finds the remains of what was then the greatest building in the world. Traveling on to Mathura he tells the amazing story of one of India's greatest rulers who opened up India to the world and laid the foundations of medieval India-only to be overthrown in his own capital.
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