Overview
Twenty years ago, when the author and his best friend, Mike Moe, were eighteen years old, they lit out from Wyoming to explore the world. They washed up in Africa and without forethought or planning set off for the most remote place on earth they could imagine: Timbuktu. Stopped by disease and the desert, they never reached the fabled city. Nonetheless, that first journey taught them the meaning of travel - that to be en route is more important than to arrive, that where your body has been is secondary to where your heart has gone. Fifteen years later they return to Africa, determined to reach Timbuktu. But this time they will do so by water, attempting the first descent of the Niger River. Both men are now married, their wives pregnant, their lives irrevocably altered from their days of youth. With an intuitive African guide and two companions, they search for and find the source of the Niger River high in the mountains of Guinea. The river immediately bears them into the heart of Africa, the Dark Continent; they are attacked by African killer bees, charged by hippos, stalked by crocodiles, borne over waterfalls. They pass through villages where every female child has had a clitoridectomy; stumble upon a brotherhood of blind men living alone in the bush; dance by firelight with a hundred naked women. And yet even after successfully navigating the headwaters of the Niger, the author still has not reached the dream of his youth. He then buys a motorcycle, rides alone through the Sahara, and enters Timbuktu, the mythical city hidden in a sea of white sand. Throughout, the author interweaves the tales of his own journey with the stories of the early explorers who tried to reachTimbuktu, men of unconquerable will, vanity, and perseverance, who would die beheaded, speared, or eaten alive by illness.Editorials
Publishers Weekly -
Mark and Mike are friends, both skilled climbers, swimmers, boaters and explorers, who one day decide to find the headwaters of the Niger River and make their way to Timbuktu. So little is known about this river that it is still uncertain whether it runs east or west, but the dangers of the expedition are attested to by records of many who did not survive starvation, fevers, crocodiles, hostile tribes, heat. With two other friends and mountains of gear, including tents, medical supplies, guns and collapsible kayaks, they set out, leaving their pregnant wives, both of whom were about to go into labor back home in Wyoming. A skeptical but knowledgeable guide safely shepherds them through desert, jungle and native villages where tribal chieftains are hospitable. They join tribal dances, survive exhaustion, blistered feet and attacks from insects and bees and at last stumble on the tiny subsurface pool where the Niger begins. Following it to where they can launch their kayaks, they paddle for days down treacherous, crocodile-infested waters. Eventually bored and exhausted, they decide they've had enough, but rather than abandon their ultimate goal, the author motorcycles across the Sahara to Timbuktu. This is a gripping adventure filled with the ambiance of still-wild Africa, its villages and people, all elegantly described by Jenkins, an editor for Backpacker. Photos. (June)Library Journal
The Niger River in West Africa is 2500 miles longlonger than the Danube or the Volga. Jenkins, a writer for Backpacker who ran the Niger from its source to Timbuktu, offers here a first-person account of his journey. Starting from the source, he and a close friend and acquaintances kayak past crocodiles, hippos, and somnolent villages as they go from jungle to desert. The look at village life forms the most intriguing part of the book. Jenkins weaves in vignettes of early explorations of West Africa that are of some interest but might better have been used to offer more information about the people and places along the Niger. Still, he has spun an excellent travel yarn about an area little considered in the West. Recommended for public libraries.David Schau, Kanawha Cty. P.L., Charleston, W. Va.Kirkus Reviews
Some intrepid young men become the first outsiders to boat down the fearsome upper reaches of the Niger River.In the early 19th century, most of the Europeans exploring the remote reaches of this 3,000-mile-long African river perished as from disease or accident, or at the hands of hostile natives, and while Jenkins (Off the Map, 1993) and his three mates face those same challenges to only a slightly lesser degree, their expedition is ultimately done in by a mixture of ennui and anger. Still, before the Niger flattens out and the narrative follows suit, the expedition has its moments. After climbing in the wet, heavily forested mountains of Guinea to locate the river's headwaters, the fellows launch their frail kayaks into the fast-moving stream; running into nearly impenetrable walls of vegetation, they are forced to flee from swarms of bees, to retreat in the face of an angry hippo, and to constantly scan the water for malevolent crocodiles. John and Rick, the two less experienced kayakers, develop grudges against Jenkins and his buddy, Mike, who shares the author's lust for risk-taking adventures. As the river settles into its broad floodplain and slows, Jenkins and Mike begin to think of their wives at home in Wyoming, both seven months pregnant. Short of their original destination, Timbuktu, the pair disembark, leaving John and Rick—who eventually kayak the entire length of the river—to go it alone. But after Mike flies home, Jenkins decides he wants to reach Timbuktu after all and buys passage on a packed steamer. Interspersed are flashbacks to an earlier, rambling trip to North Africa when Jenkins was a teenager, and far more interesting tales of the early and mostly tragic adventures of the foursome's predecessors.
While the narrative's occasional sluggishness and sometimes boastful prose can be heavy wading, the subject matter ought to hold the interest of like-minded adventurers.