In Antiquity, other unnamed Greeks may have gone further east before the formal establishment of the Silk Road: there are indications that from Alexandria Eschate the Greco-Bactrians may have led expeditions as far as Kashgar and Ürümqi in Xinjiang, leading to the first known contacts between China and the West around 220 BC. The Greek historian Strabo writes of the Greco-Bactrians that "they extended their empire even as far as the Seres (Chinese) and the Phryni" (Strabo, Strabo XI.XI.I). Also in India, the Indo-Greeks under Menander I led conquests as far as Pataliputra, probably the farthest known eastern foray of the ancient Greeks.
