Customer Reviews

Danziger's Travels: Beyond Forbidden Frontiers

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

We were vacationing in England, when I saw this book on the shelf at Foyle's. I picked it up and read the back and we spent a lot of money at Foyle's but I didn't buy DANZIGER'S TRAVELS. However, it kept coming back into my thoughts every time we'd pass a bookstore, so at the airport, before we boarded the plane, I ran like a madwoman to the newstand and purchased a copy. I read it the whole way home on the plane, in the limousine on the ride home, and for three days following our return. I did take time out to unpack, but not much. It is a really interesting travel story, and an interesting telling of how Danziger was affected personally by the trip, but more by the people. Pick it up and see if you can put it down, I'll bet you can't. It's worth the time.

This was a great read. I have an Iranian friend who expressed serious doubts as to the authenticity of Danziger's one-night stand with his Iranian hostess, as well as his other improbable adventures. But fabrication or not, I liked the book a lot.

This is THE book to read if you're interested in a non-touristic account of travel in Asia. Danziger travelled from London to Beijing for a total of $1800! His experiences are conveyed with a depth of perception and feeling that make this a truly great read. Out of print??? It's a crime!!!

It is a true shame that Danziger's Travels is out of print--which it has been for along time because I have been trying to buy it for friends. I read it several years ago and discovered a world that no one will ever travel to again. Nick Danziger was brave and honest and a terrific writer. Vintage Departures should be ashamed.

This is by far the best contemporary travel book I've read. Equal to the best of this genre from any period. I can't believe it's out of stock!!! I just loaned it to my best friend and she also thought it was fantastic.

I finished it 5 minutes ago. Woweeeeee! Where can I find him? A must-have at the Eternal Dinner, Danziger provides the rarest of glimpses into an exotic, often-romanticised world: the humble. No Marlboro Man here, he faces the paradox of describing a world of extreme personal significance, yet one which our very interest might destroy.

Unlike many, Danziger's Travels is not the account of a would-be hero. He climbed the highest passes in the world, dived to avoid rockets in Afghanistan, but that is not reason enough to respect him. The respect comes from his quiet observations, his passion in the face of adversity , and his great love for the people he encountered. Above all, from his ability to keep his account intensely personal, yet without a spotlight.

His book fulfills and builds on the purpose of his journey: to show that people are people the world over, to break down prejudice and preconception between cultures, to encourage communication in the face of authoritarian rigidity. It is a book of real substance, of feeling, of soul. Much more than an armchair adventure.

Five people are waiting in line for my copy. Need one say more?

I want to inject a little caution amongst all the wild enthusiasm I read in the reviews of this book. I rate this book 3-1/2 to 4 stars. (See below of a sample of books I consider to be 5-star books.)

Danziger's Travels is, no doubt, a fun read. Mr. Danziger does a fine job of relating what he sees in his long trip across Eurasia -- once he actually gets going. The hand-wringing, wingeing, and adolescent philosophizing that is given before the actual trip starts could be skipped (pp. 1-16 in the hardcover). At least he keeps it brief unlike T.E. Lawrence who carries on for 100 pages before landing in Jiddah (just start after he lands in Jiddah, an excellent book after that.) (Seven Pillars of Wisdom: A Triumph)

Danziger writes an entertaining travelogue about an interesting time, particularly in central and east Asia (the Afghan resistance to the Soviets, the rebuilding of Tibet, the economic invasion of Sinkiang by the Han, the first cracks of daylight into China and Tibet since the 1950s, Khomieni's Iran in its early days.) He certainly had good timing. The book reads effortlessly and he is an excellent writer on what he sees and the people he meets. And I will grant this: He indugles in very little navel-gazing (after the first chapter) something which many current travel writers could learn from.

My problem with the book as a whole is that it just doesn't ring true. No one has this kind of luck, is this patient, had this kind of equanimity and equilibrium, while having the smarts of a local and the endurance of a Kenyan distance runner and the nerve of front line soldier. Just far too many perfect coincidences. (And he needn't have shared his sexual conquests with us: I guess he really was YOUNG wasn't he?)

This excerpt makes the point: "I wasn't prepared to have my movements hampered by artificially imposed barriers* and I wanted to break the myth that all foreigners were a breed apart." [*Such as the local laws!] My, he pontificates well for a man with the wisdom of age 25 or 26.

A fun read, if can take it with a grain of salt and keeping the thousand and one nights in mind. A peek at some interesting times in Asia. Certainly not a classic. The gushing reviews indicate to me less the quality of this book than the limited travel literature reading of the reviewer. I strongly recommend to you the following:

Jupiters Travels: Four Years Around the World on a Triumph

One Man Caravan ("Incredible Journeys" Books)

News from Tartary: A Journey from Peking to Kashmir (Marlboro Travel)

A Short Walk in the Hindu Kush (Travel Literature)

Love & War in the Apennines (Travel Literature)

Seven Years in Tibet

Arabian Sands (Penguin Classics)

Motoring with Mohammed: Journeys to Yemen and the Red Sea

Two Years Before the Mast (Signet Classics)

Sailing Alone around the World, by Joshua Slocum

Full Tilt: Ireland to India with a Bicycle, by Dervla Murphy

No Picnic on Mount Kenya: A Daring Escape, A Perilous Climb, by Felice Benuzzi

I found this book about 15 years ago, and pick it up at least once every 2 to 3 years to re-read. Absolutely fascinating, and a great look into the cultures along the Silk Road. In fact, this book sparked my interest in it, culminating with trips to Afghanistan (for work) in 2003, and on the Silk Road from Beijing to Kashgar in 2007.

Nick Danziger tells a great tale, and the journey across Afghanistan, dodging Soviet patrols and Hinds is riveting.

I first picked up this book ten years ago at a secondhand shop in Rawalpindi, Pakistan, at the end of the Karakoram highway and read it with fascination. Having travelled most of the same route very thoroughly myself, some things in the book come across as a little too fantastic, and others are just wrong . To be generous these could be failings of memory. Yet, these are minor flaws, that haven't stopped me from enjoying the book.

I disagree with the complaints on the amazon.uk site about the quality of the prose, keeping in mind it is a personal travel book and not a scholarly examination of the regions he passes through. We get insights into the people he meets but most importantly into the life of Mr Danziger himself. The omissions, the fantasies and ultimately the focus of the book always, like a dream, come back to the narrator and his own experience on his narrow path across the globe.

Well worth a read.

While visiting England earlier this year, my English friend recommended, among many other travel narratives, this book, and I didn't put it down until I finished it. Even in the water closet I was riveted with this enthralling adventure. It's stories like these that keep me travelling.