Along the Inca Road: A Woman's Journey into an Ancient Empire (Adventure Press) [Paperback]

Karin Muller (Author)

Book Description

Series: Adventure Press | Publication Date: September 1, 2001

In its heyday, the Royal Inca Highway was an extraordinary feat of engineering. Meriting comparisons to the Great Wall of China, legend has it that the route was built not by men, but by the gods. An essential component of the far-flung Inca Empire, the original course of the 3200 mile Inca Road remains a source of speculation. Along the Inca Road is the dramatic account of Karin Muller's seven-month adventure following and documenting her experiences along these ancient routes. Affording a rare and revealing glimpse into the present-day descendants of the Inca. Muller's odyssey begins at the border of Ecuador and continues down the Andes Culminating in Santiago, near the southernmost reach of the Inca Empire. Along the way, Muller has a tense encounter with Brazilian soldiers, tries her hand at bullfighting at a festival in the ancient Inca town of Ollantaytambo, joins in the yearly roundup and shearing of the endangered Peruvian vicuna, accompanies the Ecuadorian military on a de-mining patrol through the beautiful Cordillera of the Condors, and much more. A compelling story of a woman's solo journey through the heart of an elusive land, the literally groundbreaking Along the Inca Road will be released in conjunction with a highly touted documentary on The National Geographic channels airing in 54 countries.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

What's an American woman doing shaking a pink cape at a bull on a hillside in Peru? Ask Karin Muller, a self-described vagabond who is game for anything, especially if it's a traditionally male task in strictly sex role-divided South America. After years of contemplating the thin red line of the Inca Road on her map of the world, Muller takes off with a grant from the National Geographic Society (which also supplied a cameraman) for a six-month jaunt through Ecuador, Peru, Brazil, and Chile. Along the way, she searches for remnants of the ancient stone-paved road and jumps headfirst into whatever adventure she can find. First stop, a cuy doctor whacks her on the back and head with a whimpering guinea pig, then offers her a diagnosis based on the quality of the animal's intestines. She's tear-gassed in an indigenous antigovernment protest, and dresses in an orange cloak, gold sparkles, and black face paint (a concoction made of tar and animal fat) to pull a 200-pound roast pig during the Festival of Mama Negra. In a surreal moment, she witnesses the mysterious crash of a Brazilian military helicopter in the Andean highlands, and in a horrific one, crawls through a mole-like tunnel deep into a mountainside where men spend years digging for gold, leaving only to eat, wash, and haul their ore 423 steps to a giant crushing machine. She even watches a military crew clear live mines planted by Peruvians during the Ecuador-Peruvian border war.

Throughout her adventures, Muller weaves a lively history of the rise and fall of the Incan empire. While the old road is hard to find, the Incan legacy is everywhere, from curanderismo (shamanism) to roundups of golden-fleeced vicunas by villagers spread in human chains to the farming of coca leaves. Her explication of the coca tradition is particularly interesting: the "quintessential Andean sacrament" and the ultimate marker of indigenous identity, chewing coca leaves is akin to sharing a cup of coffee. Of course, she also joins a Bolivian special forces drug patrol in the Amazon to see the more familiar face of cocaine. While Muller doesn't slow down long enough for introspection or much genuine human connection (and you have to occasionally wonder about her cultural sensitivity), she does have a remarkable knack for putting herself in the middle of events, and an unflagging enthusiasm for taking risks most tourists wouldn't dream of. --Lesley Reed --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Publishers Weekly

Hoping to embark on a "hero's journey," Muller (Hitchhiking Vietnam) makes the most of a National Geographic grant to explore the ancient Inca Highway that runs through the Andes. Explaining her intention, Muller writes that heroes "are not the strongest nor the bravest, nor even the most deserving. But they all share one trait: They are traveling into the unknown." In this spirit, Muller travels over 3,000 miles through Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia and Chile for "six unscheduled months to take advantage of every opportunity that comes my wayAto spend time with farmers plowing their fields and cross the high plains with a llama caravan." Muller's enthusiasm and interest are unflagging whether in the midst of a dangerous political protest in Quito or undergoing a traditional guinea-pig healing session elsewhere in Ecuador. ("A razor blade materialized and the animal was slit from chin to tail, its skin pulled off like a glove.") While Muller admits difficulty in abiding by some cultural practices encounteredA"the trouble was my own upbringing," she admits, "the only real religion in my family was science"Ashe proves fearless and open-hearted, loath to pass up any experience. Muller even goes out of her way to join a physically and emotionally grueling patrol to remove land mines in the Cordillera mountain range, never complaining that what was said to be a "demonstration" was actually a field of live mines. "That night I dreamt of wandering through a field of exquisite purple flowers," she writes. "I leaned down to pluck one and vaporized." Muller weaves substantial bits of South American history, geography and current events throughout the text, a fitting tribute to an extraordinary odyssey. 16 photos. (Sept.)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 320 pages
• Publisher: National Geographic (September 1, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0792277279
• ISBN-13: 978-0792277279
• Product Dimensions: 8.8 x 5.8 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 15.4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (20 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #995,272 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

23 of 26 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Trying to be one of the guys...., October 30, 2000

By 

L. Alper (Englewood CO) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Along the Inca Road: A Woman's Journey into an Ancient Empire (Adventure Press) (Hardcover)

If I had realised that "Along the Inca Road" was written by the same author who previously graced us with "Hitch-hiking Vietnam" I probably never would have picked it up. Karin Muller's first book showed a singular lack of empathy with the Vietnamese & their culture; altho she seems much more sympathetic to South Americans, Muller still lacks the ability to bring a foreign land to life.

In almost every chapter of "Along the Inca Road", Karin Muller bulldoggedly attempts to muscle in on the local men & their activities. We find her bullying a fisherman into making her a reed boat & taking her out to fish with him, jumping into a bullring with no preparation or permission, & accompanying the Bolivian drug squads into the jungle as they search for cocaine labs. Then when she is blistered, burned & gored she complains through gritted teeth on her way to her next misguided attempt to be "one of the guys". As someone who has spent a good deal of time in Central/South America, I can attest these are people to whom gender roles are very much an unchanging part of their culture. Muller's attempts to break this divide down simply alienate those whom she is trying to get close to.

Some of the other difficulties I have with Muller's travels include the fact that she seems to spend very little time in each area. The total time she spent "On the Inca Road" traveling thru 4 countries (all new to her) was 6 months. This means she spent approximately 1 week at the longest of her destinations. That doesn't seem to give much time for studying a culture or getting to know the locals. This is reflected in her writing which is superficial & lacking in any strong descriptive passages. I never truly "saw" the areas she passed through, & the photos included in the book were not much help either. A more detailed map of her travels would have been helpful as well.

This is a fast paced book, which is interesting when dealing with the historical Incan Empire & the vestiges of it still in existance today. It's too bad she couldn't have spent more time in less places so that the feeling of South America could come through a little more clearly.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Read it for the adventure, not the facts., November 8, 2005

By 

Tusuy "Monica" (Fairfax, VA USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Along the Inca Road: A Woman's Journey into an Ancient Empire (Adventure Press) (Paperback)

I decided to read this book with much caution; it seemed at best a very superficial account of an adventurous travel narrative. While I applaud the author's courage and willingness to endanger herself for the sake of telling a good story, her willingness to learn about Andean traditions along the Inca road camouflages her ingrained ignorance and arrogance of people and cultures of the Andean region.

I did not expect to read an anthropological analysis of the author's encounters along the Inca Road, but neither did I expect her demeaning attitude of indigenous culture. Muller's treatment of events and traditions she encountered reflects a shallow understanding of Andean cultures. The precise moment where my disgust of the author's vision overcame my interest in her adventures occurred when she described an Aymara person speaking in a mixture of broken Spanish and in the Aymara dialect. This statement completely overlooks the fact that Spanish varieties exist in various forms and that the Aymara language was never a dialect, but a language of a civilization that predates the Incas.

For centuries, the process of translating cultures has exacerbated the conditions of difference, and the wide gap between the "us versus them". While, the author seems to want to avoid further alienation between the materialistically modernized, namely herself, and the Andean world, her contributions fall into this category. She paints herself a heroic woman, challenging social roles and customs, but along the way proves that the stereotypical version of the "ugly American" still exists in ignorant travelers.
While I commend her efforts in her travel narrative, I caution all readers to not read her book for cultural understanding of the region.

7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Take a walk, August 18, 2001

By 

Dan Schobert (Plover, Wisconsin) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Along the Inca Road: A Woman's Journey into an Ancient Empire (Adventure Press) (Hardcover)

A book review

It is safe to say that although there are many travel opportunities available today, the majority of people on this planet will seldom stray far from their home roots. Some may take a trip here or there but in the main, few casual travelers (of the several billion earth occupants) will go very far away.

All of this is to say that though we may not go ourselves, we can travel to far away places by motion pictures, video and, of course by reading books by those who have gone to the places that, for many people, will never be on their travel agenda.

Karin Muller does this as she traveled "Along The Inca Road," which is the name of her book, published in 2000 by the National Geographic Society of Washington, D.C. It is her journal of traveling this historic road of some 3,100 miles which runs along the coast line and nearby mountains of western South America.

There were adventures at nearly every juncture as Muller encountered people and cultures reflecting the days of the Inca. Though those days are long gone, the Inca live on through many of the customs and lives of those peoples who today inhabit the villages and cities along this road. In a vivid way the book is a mix of the past & the present. That is, in order to understand the lives of today's people along this road, it became necessary to appreciate their roots. How did it happen that they exist as they do? What are the many tales they repeat and repeat, as parts of their cultures?

The nearly 300 pages of Muller's work is a word by word trip, to say the least. It brings into closer focus lands, people and history that most of us have long ago forgotten, having met the facts in elementary school, if at all.

It is an easy and pleasant read.

Dan Schobert