Customer Reviews

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

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(6)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

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.

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.

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

Muller is a wonderful travel writer with the ability to make even the mundane come alive. Her way with words ("The main square was full of Saturday-night drunks all walking like wobbly bowling pins") keeps you reading on to find out where she will land next, and among whom. From helicopter crashes to street festivals, Karin Muller follows this ancient road, and allows serendipity to play its hand. She encounters not only the absurd and strange (having your head beaten with a guinea pig to find out your disease or ailment), but the beautiful and sublime ("people who reached out to help a stranger through a day of violence and despair").

Her travels follow the famed Inca Road. This ancient highway reached from Equador down to Chile, and played a critical role in homogenizing the Inca Civilization. I have been to South America over a dozen times in the past six years and her highly entertaining stories ring true.

There is a significant weakness to this book - the lack of maps. I find it a bit baffling, that National Geographic, curator of some of the world best maps, failed to include any quality maps of a journey that snakes down and around South America. Rather, National Geographic gives you one decrepit and confusing black and white map of South America. BUT! They do include 26 excellent color photographs. Go figure.

In `Along the Inca Road', Karin Muller gives you more than just a great read, she furnishes you with provocative and informative insights into both the history of the Inca and their culture. This is a wonderful book and will be enjoyed by all who appreciate the Inca culture, South America and great travel writing. You should read this book. 4 1/2 Stars Recommended

As always, Karin Muller makes a good adventure statment through her solid writing. However, as an adventurer and history buff, I thought the book lacked the depth and content both the jacket synopsis and the introductory chapter might suggest.

Karin provides some interesting adventures that a typical gringo trail adventurer might encounter - without fully providing her view on how historical cultures are reflected in the "modern-day" Inca.

I scored this book with three stars because it had some entertainment value, but was disappointing overall.

The strange thing about this book is that theoretically everything's fine about it - looking for and at the remains of a fascinating culture, the author taking part in the local rituals and daily life, writing of acceptable quality. It should be grand - and still I don't like it for some reason.

What made this book quite tiresome was Karin Muller's lack of a sense of humor. It is my firm belief that it is very hard to write a breathtaking book about a difficult journey without being able to see the funny side of different situations. Perhaps that was why I can't say I like the author as a person - and since this book is based on her personal experiences, that itself takes away from the fun of reading this book. Also - as another reviewer correctly noted - she constantly tries to do things that are only done by men in this country, ignoring the gender roles there are a part of the local culture. Is it some misguided attempt to show that women are equal to men? It's certainly very out of place in this country of so ancient traditions.

Karin Muller's descriptions lack real vividness, and she is considers too many local people to be weird. True, their lifestyle is quite different, but it can be said with absolute certainty that so are the lifestyles of many individuals of her own country. She gives fake respect to the world views of these people, talking about how perhaps that is the right way to live. It is obvious she doesn't have the intention of ever doing so.

My review is almost certainly too negative, do not expect the book to be so bad, but I have outlined the main faults simply trying to guess why I instinctively didn't like this book.

And - too much amateur philosophy, perhaps?

Compelling, entertaining, historical... this book is a real page-turner.

Muller's keenly-observed journey skillfully interweaves past and present, giving the reader a glimpse of what life must have been like in the golden heyday of the Inca empire as she walks along stones and walkways trodden by warriors and peasants for hundreds of years. She writes with compassion and genuine understanding of those she meets along the way - peopling her book with characters who come to life and leap off the page. Along the Inca Road transports the reader into a world most of us will never see - probably for the best, since the road is long and arduous. I'm glad I didn't have to do it - but I'm even more glad that she did!

Along The Inca Road is a fresh and exciting experiential travel documentary written by a woman who follows a route of the ancient Inca Road from Quito, Ecuador to Santiago, Chile, along the mountains and coast of western South America. Her experiences are immediate, vivid, demanding and colorful. She clearly enjoys the challenge of dipping into and sampling all aspects of local culture. We are with her as she learns to pilot a caballero (reed boat) on the coast of Peru, carries the feast table of Mama Negra in Lacta Cunga, and climbs endless roads and trails to meet the people. Along The Inca Road is a book about the author's experiences with the people as much as about geography and history. After many hair-raising, sometimes hilarious, always challenging and intriguing experiences, she sums it up with the following:

"I had once thought that I was embarking on a 'hero's journey' - an odyssey into the unknown, filled with obstacles, success and failure, and newfound knowledge. And so it had been - only I wasn't the hero of this story. I was just the chronicler. The true heroes were the people I met along the way... They had all stopped for a while to lend me a hand. What I learned from them would carry me through the weeks to come. As long as their memories stayed with me, this journey would never really end (p. 294-295)."

And even more succinctly, she remarks: "The history books have it all wrong. The Inca Empire was never really conquered. It's alive and well (p.294)."

To participate vicariously in her fresh experiences, read this bright travelogue. You won't be able to put it down.

Nancy Lorraine, Reviewer

My wife and I saw her give a talk about this book at a Smithsonian Resident Associates presentation. What she described was a very interesting and totally empathetic project -- how she spent months ahead of time learning the local languages (first she'd study long lists of vocabulary, for her, she said, knowing the grammar was no help until you had a rich vocabulary). She didn't go into the schedule and timeline in detail in her talk, but the process she described was one of total immersion in a local area and total empathy with the local residents. For example, she said she'd just come into an area and chill, not even taking out her camera until she was so "at home" that the locals didn't even notice. Or she told this long anecdote about how the local women showed her how to hand-spin wool. In other words, not your average "travel book," but something very, very different, a real immersion in the local culture.

I have no idea if that was total BS or if she actually believes that's what she does. But the story told in the book bears no resemblance to the project described in the SRA talk. Obviously, the "adventure" happened long before the heyday of reality television, but her trip is more like a "slice of life" reality show (Jersey Shore, Real Housewives, Pawn Stars) than an anthropological project. The whole book is a series of staged episodes, most of which involved her barging in to the life of "fairly simple" people (fishermen, vicuna herders, etc.) for a few days and stage managing a "look at me" tableau, none of which involved "blending in" to the local culture. The whole trip, involving thousands of miles, four countries, and a dozen or more distinct cultures, lasted six months -- more time than I spend on my vacations, but hardly a "get to know every detail of the local life" field study. "Totally blending in before I even take my camera out" doesn't square with a week or less at each site.

Some of the stories were interesting, a few seem to show some genuine interest in and understanding of the lives of the local people. But the overall book comes off as rushed, staged (she was accompanied by a Nat Geo cameraman -- how's that for "blending in?"), and profoundly narcissistic. I might not have resented this book so much if I had come across it "cold," but I was really let down because the story told in the book was so much at odds with the author's description of what she did. Two stars for moderately interesting stories, negative one stars for dishonest presentation.

How such a horribly-written, aggressively uninteresting account found any publisher is beyond me; I finished the book out of sheer compulsiveness. National Geographic isn't known for fine writing, but they've outdone themselves this time: there are painful cliches and tortured metaphors in almost every paragraph. Never once did I think "Wow--what an elegantly-crafted phrase."

This may well be the worst book I've ever read--and I felt predisposed to like it since I'm an independent traveler and I've met Muller in person.

Ugh.