At last, summer has arrived! A great book is the perfect accompaniment to summer travels, whether you're adventuring abroad or to the beach. Restless is pleased to bring you more of our favorite classic and contemporary travel narratives through our Restless Women Travelers series, now in its second summer. Published as affordable eBooks, they're optimized for reading on the go.
Kira Salak became the first person in the world to kayak alone the 600 miles on the Niger River of Mali to Timbuktu, retracing the fatal journey of the great Scottish explorer Mungo Park. Enduring tropical storms, unruly hippos, fierce rapids, and the unrelenting heat of the Sahara desert, Salak traveled solo through one of the most desolate and dangerous regions in Africa, where little had changed since Mungo Park was taken captive by Moors in 1797. Finally, weak with dysentery but triumphant, she arrived in the fabled city of Timbuktu and fulfilled her ultimate goal: buying the freedom of two Bella slave women. The Cruelest Journey is an unputdownable adventure story as well as a meditation on courage and self-mastery by one of our most accomplished travel writers.
List Price $14.99
A vivid, varied account of a globally-minded woman’s intriguing adventures and evolving worldview, Santha Rama Rau’s autobiography covers a life defined by almost perpetual motion—from her birth in India to an upbringing in England and South Africa, from her education at Wellesley College in the United States to far-flung travel to China, Japan, Indonesia, Russia, Afghanistan, Kenya, Spain, and beyond. Part memoir, part journalism, Gifts of Passage is at once intimate and expansive, taking the reader on a tour of Indian family life, repression in South Africa, the trial of Jomo Kenyatta, and the early stirrings of Indian democracy.
More on Restless Women Travelers:
