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To Timbuktu: A Journey Down the Niger [Paperback]

Mark Jenkins
4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)


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Book Description

May 27, 2008

     For nearly eight years as the monthly columnist for Outside magazine, and in his award-winning books, Mark Jenkins has held fans spellbound with his riveting accounts of expeditions to remote parts of the globe. In To Timbuktu, he sets out with three friends to attempt their first descent of the Niger River, hoping to reach the legendary city of Timbuktu. Along the way they are attacked by killer bees, charged by hippos, and stalked by crocodiles. They stumble upon a group of completely blind men living alone in the bush and dance with a hundred naked women. That Jenkins finally reaches his goal—riding alone across the Sahara on a motorcycle—stands in sharp contrast to what befell earlier explorers who tried to find Timbuktu and whose fates the author interweaves with the narrative of his own journey.

     A rich combination of cultural exploration, history, and gripping adventure, this beautifully repackaged edition of To Timbuktu is a journey not to be missed.

 

 



Editorial Reviews

Review

"Here is a lust for rigorous adventure . . . Jenkins displays a Whitmanesque openness to experience. He has the descriptive and narrative skills to bring off a vivid and gritty portrait of a little-explored corner of the world."—Bill Berkeley, Los Angeles Times
"Jenkins's story is remarkable, and he is a major writing talent, able to see the world and describe it in ways that are new and refreshing."—Craig Holt, The Durham Herald-Sun
"There is a melancholy . . . implicit in Mr. Jenkins's writing, that travel involves something futile, a disregard of Pascal's epigram about all evil things coming from man's being unable to sit still in a room. But it is just that touch of melancholy, of regret, of the hopelessness of the quest that gives To Timbuktu its resonance."—Richard Bernstein, The New York Times

About the Author

MARK JENKINS is global correspondent for Rodale magazines and a former monthly columnist for Outside magazine. Besides writing the critically acclaimed books A Man’s Life, The Hard Way, and Off the Map, Jenkins is featured in Best American Travel Writing and has written for Men’s Health, Backpacker, Time, the Atlantic Monthly, National Geographic, and other media. When he’s not off adventuring, he lives in Laramie, Wyoming.

Product Details

  • Paperback: 224 pages
  • Publisher: Modern Times; 1st edition (May 27, 2008)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 1594867658
  • ISBN-13: 978-1594867651
  • Product Dimensions: 9 x 5.1 x 0.6 inches
  • Shipping Weight: 4 ounces
  • Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
  • Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #221,661 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

4.0 out of 5 stars
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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
Format: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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6 of 7 people found the following review helpful
3.0 out of 5 stars Kayaking adventure, not Africa so much December 16, 2008
Format: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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2 of 3 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars To Timbuktu July 18, 2009
By Tootsie
Format: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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