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5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Kayaking adventure, not Africa so much, December 16, 2008
This review is from: To Timbuktu: A Journey Down the Niger (Paperback)
I found this book describing a kayaking journey down the Niger river generally well-written, but not what I was hoping for. My interest is more about African history and exploration. This books seems more about the authors and the adventure of the trip (they smuggle handguns into Africa to protect themselves from crocs/hippos) rather than the history, culture, and experiences associated with the trip. I found three elements unappealing. First, the book tries to interweave three semi-connected components: the current trip by the authors, a previous trip to Morocco by two of the authors, and the history of Saharan exploration or at least the search for Timbuktu and the Niger (Park, Laing, Caillié). This seriously disrupts the flow in my opinion as it jumps around rather abruptly. The second aspect is the author's style of writing where he includes occasional words that seem unnecessary. For example, in one case he is describing an African man with normal language then throws in the fact that he has a "cicatrice" on his face. Why not just say a scar? The third element I found unappealing is that the author and one of his colleagues quit the river trip prematurely. The author did continue to Timbuktu by motorcycle overland, one companion returned home to Wyoming, and the remaining two continued to the Niger's Atlantic terminus. I will admit that the authors search for the "source" of the Niger and adventures in Guinea were something that is generally not included in similar travels. Overall it was an interesting book, but did not contribute substantially to my interest in Africa.
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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Enjoyable, but not entirely what I was hoping for..., December 18, 2008
This review is from: To Timbuktu: A Journey Down the Niger (Paperback)
A generally well-written travelogue of a trip down the Niger River, with periodic digressions into the history of African exploration and the author's personal life and history. Unlike a previous reviewer, I did not find these separate aspects of the story and the transitions between them to be distracting--in fact I found them some of the most compelling aspects of the book.
My biggest gripe was that the book really is not about a trip to Timbuktu, which was what I was looking for when I bought it. The book is about the trip down the Niger, and the author's relationship with his friend, much more than it is about Timbuktu or even really Africa, in more than a broad sense. The final trip to Timbuktu, made after the main journey, seems almost completely superfluous and disappointing. It's basically the story of a trip down the Niger, followed by "Oh, yeah, and I went to Timbuktu". It didn't make me like the rest of it less, but it didn't really add anything, and it left me on a note of disappointment, since Timbuktu was really my reason for reading.
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
To Timbuktu, July 18, 2009
This review is from: To Timbuktu: A Journey Down the Niger (Paperback)
I read this book by Mark Jenkins first and was so impressed with his writing that I immediately bought his book on Bicycling to Siberia. This was a great read and I would recommend it to anyone at all interested in adventurous and unusual travel.
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