Cruelest Journey: Six Hundred Miles To Timbuktu
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Written by Kira Salak.
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Editorial Review (from Amazon.com)
Kira Salak is a young woman with a history of seeking impossible challenges. She grew up relishing the exploits of the great Scottish explorer Mungo Park and set herself the daunting goal of retracing his fatal journey down West Africa's Niger river for 600 miles to Timbuktu. In so doing she became the first person to travel alone from Mali's Old Segou to "the golden city of the Middle Ages," and, legend has it, the doorway to the end of the world. In the face of the hardships she knew were to come, it is amazing that she could have been so sanguine about her journey's beginning: "I have the peace and silence of the wide river, the sun on me, a breeze licking my toes, the current as negligible as a faint breath. Timbuktu seems distant and unimaginable." Enduring tropical storms, hippos, rapids, the unrelenting heat of the Sahara desert and the mercurial moods of this notorious river, she traveled solo through one of the most desolate regions in Africa where little had changed since Mungo Park was taken captive by Moors in 1797. Dependent on locals for food and shelter, each night she came ashore to stay in remote mud-hut villages on the banks of the Niger, meeting Dogan sorceresses and tribes who alternately revered and reviled her- so remarkable was the sight of an unaccompanied white woman paddling all the way to Timbuktu. Indeed, on one harrowing stretch she barely escaped harm from men who chased her in wooden canoes, but she finally arrived, weak with dysentery, but triumphant, at her destination. There, she fulfilled her ultimate goal by buying the freedom of two Bella slaves with gold. This unputdownable story is also a meditation on self-mastery by a young adventuress withoutequal, whose writing is as thrilling as her life.User Reviews (1) Login or create an account to write a review.
Chelsey Franklin thinks this book is Good.
I had a little time in the afternoon a couple days ago so I headed to the library to pick up something to read and maybe a movie or two. I sauntered over to the travel section in the non-fiction section looking for something adventurous. I got what I was looking for! I picked this book up and flipped it open in the middle and read a little and was hooked. I love Kira Salak's style. This book is her journal (revised i'm sure) of a trip down the Niger river in a kayak, a woman, alone, in a muslim country where women don't even paddle a boat on the river, let alone travel 600 miles alone. I'm not finished with it yet, but I love every minute of it and will feel sad when she's done with her journey. She describes the reactions she gets from the isolated villages she encounters, as well as the self probing she does paddling solo down the river. Being alone like that, truly nothing for miles around and when you do encounter people it's just people. No cars, no motors, no electricity, no running water. Amazing. Anyway, like I said, I am really enjoying her style which is well expressed, intimate, and enlightening.