Cruelest Journey: Six Hundred Miles To Timbuktu
by Kira Salak
List Price:
Our Price: $13.12
You Save: $12.88 (50%)
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Buy Used: from $5.27 (click here)
Category: Book
See more book details and other editions
Book Summary Information
Author: Kira SalakEdition: Hardcover
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2004-11-01
ISBN: 0792274571
Number of pages: 320
Publisher: National Geographic
Summary of Cruelest Journey: Six Hundred Miles To Timbuktu
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.Niger Books
Book Subjects
- Arts & Photography
- Biographies & Memoirs
- Business & Investing
- Children's Books
- Comics & Graphic Novels
- Computers & Internet
- Cooking, Food & Wine
- Entertainment
- Gay & Lesbian
- Health, Mind & Body
- History
- Home & Garden
- Horror
- Law
- Literature & Fiction
- Mystery & Thrillers
- Nonfiction
- Outdoors & Nature
- Parenting & Families
- Professional & Technical
- Reference
- Religion & Spirituality
- Romance
- Science
- Science Fiction & Fantasy
- Sports
- Teens
- Travel
Most talked about in Niger Books
SOUVENIRS DE LA BOUCLE DU NIGER : 1953 - 1976by KELETIGUI A. MARIKO
DAKAR, LES NOUVELLES EDITIONS AFRICAINES; Published: 1980-01-01; Paperback; Book
Liber niger Scaccarii. E codice, calamo exarato, sibique ipsi à Richardo Gravesio Mickletoniensi donato, descripsit & nunc primus edidit Tho. ... MSS.... Volume 1 of 2 (Latin Edition)by See Notes Multiple Contributors
Gale ECCO, Print Editions; Published: 2010-11-19; Paperback; Book
Best price: $26.31
Price in other shops:
Die Fadenpilze, Aspergillus Flavus, Niger U. Fumigatus: Eurotium Repens (U. Aspergillus Glaucus) Und Ihre Beziehungen Zur Otomycosis Aspergillina (German Edition)by F Siebenmann
Nabu Press; Published: 2010-04-21; Paperback; Book
Best price: $11.67
Price in other shops:
Journal of an Expedition to Explore the Course and Termination of the Niger: With a Narrative of a Voyage Down That River to Its Terminationby RICHARD AND JOHN LANDER
Nabu Press; Published: 2010-03-07; Paperback; Book
Best price: $19.48
Price in other shops:
Niger: Personal Rule and Survival in the Sahel (Profiles/ Nations of Contemporary Africa)by Robert B. Charlick
Westview Pr (Short Disc); Published: 1991-04; Hardcover; Book
Price in other shops:
Negotiating Development: African Farmers and Colonial Experts at the Office Du Niger, 1920-1960 (Social History of Africa)by Monica M. Van Beusekom
James Currey; Published: 2002-06; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $216.92
Warriors, Merchants, and Slaves: The State and the Economy in the Middle Niger Valley, 1700-1914by Richard L. Roberts
Stanford University Press; Published: 1987-07; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $73.48
Journals of the Reverend James Frederick Schon and Samuel Crowther: Who, with Her Majesty's Government Accompanied the Expedition of the Niger in ... African Studies. Missionary Researches and T)by James Frederick Schon
Routledge; Published: 1970-10-01; Hardcover; Book
Price in other shops:
The Lower Niger and Its Tribes (Library of African Study)by Arthur Glyn Leonard
Routledge; Published: 1968-04-05; Hardcover; Book
Price in other shops:
Fusion of the Worlds: An Ethnography of Possession among the Songhay of Nigerby Paul Stoller
University Of Chicago Press; Published: 1989-07-10; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $28.85
Price in other shops:
Similar Books and other products
The Lost City of Z: A Tale of Deadly Obsession in the Amazonby David Grann
Vintage; Published: 2010-01-26; Paperback; Book
Best price: $5.00
Price in other shops:
Adrift: Seventy-six Days Lost at Seaby Steven Callahan
Mariner Books; Published: 2002-10-17; Paperback; Book
Best price: $3.14
Price in other shops:
Blood River: The Terrifying Journey Through The World's Most Dangerous Countryby Tim Butcher
Grove Press; Published: 2009-09-01; Paperback; Book
Best price: $4.01
Price in other shops:
The Lobster Chronicles: Life On a Very Small Islandby Linda Greenlaw
Hyperion; Published: 2003-06-11; Paperback; Book
Best price: $1.45
Price in other shops:
Invisible Citiesby Italo Calvino
Harcourt Brace Jovanovich; Published: 1978-05-03; Paperback; Book
Best price: $5.85
Price in other shops:
The White Mary: A Novelby Kira Salak
Picador; Published: 2009-09-01; Paperback; Book
Best price: $0.01
Price in other shops:
The Sex Lives of Cannibals: Adrift in the Equatorial Pacificby J. Maarten Troost
Broadway; Published: 2004-06-08; Paperback; Book
Best price: $3.99
Price in other shops:
The White Mary: A Novelby Kira Salak
Picador; Published: 2009-09-01; Paperback; Book
Best price: $2.22
Price in other shops:
Four Corners: One Woman's Solo Journey Into the Heart of Papua New Guineaby Kira Salek
Counterpoint; Published: 2001-10; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $6.90
Price in other shops:
Four Corners: A Journey into the Heart of Papua New Guineaby Kira Salak
National Geographic; Published: 2004-11-01; Paperback; Book
Best price: $6.88
Price in other shops: