To Timbuktu: A Journey Down the Niger
10 best books like To Timbuktu: A Journey Down the Niger (Mark Jenkins): Malaria Dreams: An African Adventure, Facing the Congo: A Modern-Day Journey into the Heart of Darkness, In Ethiopia with a Mule, Somebody's Heart Is Burning: A Woman Wanderer in Africa, No Picnic on Mount Kenya: A Daring Escape, A Perilous Climb, Travels in a Thin Country: A Journey Through Chile, Cruelest Journey: Six Hundred Miles To Timbuktu, In Search of King Solomon's Mines, Surviving Paradise: One Year on a Disappearing Island, Tropical Gangsters: One Man's Experience with Development and Decadence in Deepest Africa
Malaria Dreams is a book about the author and his friend's trip from West Africa to the Mediterranean in a questionable car, and it's well written. So why the one star?
I like adventure travel and adventure travel books better than the next guy usually- depending on who the next guy actually is,...
| Author | Jeffrey Tayler |
| ISBN | 0609808265 |
Faced with an identity crisis in his work and his life, seasoned traveler and journalist Jeffrey Tayler made a bold decision. He would leave behind his mundane existence in Moscow to re-create the legendary British explorer Henry Stanley’s trip down the Congo in a dugout canoe, stocked with food,...
| Author | Dervla Murphy |
| ISBN | 0006547982 |
Spurred on by romantic childhood memories of names such as Prester John, the Queen of Sheba and the Lion of Judah, and by a vision of Ethiopia as beautiful, dangerous and mysterious, Dervla Murphy set out on a hazardous trek through the Ethiopian highlands. She travelled against official advice and,...
| Author | Tanya Shaffer |
| ISBN | 1400032598 |
“It's my life, and if I want to run from it I can,” quips Tanya Shaffer. An incorrigible wanderer, Shaffer has a habit of fleeing domesticity for the joys and rigors of the open road. This time her destination is Ghana, and what results is a transformative year spent roaming the African continent....
No Picnic on Mount Kenya: A Daring Escape, A Perilous Climb
| Author | Felice Benuzzi |
| ISBN | 1558218769 |
Let me begin by stating that I am a climber and have a desire for adventure; sure, those might seem to go hand in hand, but how many climbers are willing to suffer in their thirst for adventure? My suffering has been hardly that, but the limited hardship I've endured has brought an appreciation for those...
| Author | Sara Wheeler |
| ISBN | 0375753656 |
Squeezed between a vast ocean and the longest mountain range on earth, Chile is 2,600 miles long and never more than 110 miles wide--not a country that lends itself to maps, as Sara Wheeler discovered when she traveled alone from the top to the bottom, from the driest desert in the world to the sepulchral...
| Author | Kira Salak |
| ISBN | 0792274571 |
After 37 years of never reading about Mali, I have managed two books about that country in the last month. The previous book (The Bad-Ass Librarians of Timbuktu: And Their Race to Save the World’s Most Precious Manuscripts) gave more information about the history of the region, and informed my reading...
In Search of King Solomon's Mines
| Author | Tahir Shah |
| ISBN | 1559707240 |
King Solomon, the Bible's wisest king, also possessed extraordinary wealth. He built a temple at Jerusalem that was said to be more fabulous than any other landmark in the ancient world, heavily adorned with gold from Ophir. The precise location of this legendary land has been one of history's great...
| Author | Peter Rudiak-Gould |
| ISBN | 1402766645 |
Just one month after his 21st birthday, Peter Rudiak-Gould moved to Ujae, a remote atoll in the Marshall Islands located 70 miles from the nearest telephone, car, store, or tourist, and 2,000 miles from the closest continent. He spent the next year there, living among its 450 inhabitants and teaching...
| Author | Robert Klitgaard |
| ISBN | 0465087604 |
I'm not really sure why I enjoyed this book so much; the author talked a lot about economic restructuring/ governmental organization/ etc (snore). But, every time it threatened to get bogged down, he redirected his focus to the people, culture, and natural beauty of the country. He came away from his...
| Author | Stanley Stewart |
| ISBN | 1592281060 |
Vivid, hilarious, and compelling, this eagerly awaited book takes its place among the travel classics. It is a thrilling tale of adventure, a comic masterpiece, and an evocative portrait of a medieval land marooned in the modern world. Eight and a half centuries ago, under Genghis Khan, the Mongols...
| Author | Ann Jones |
| ISBN | 0375705333 |
The adventure began when a young British photographer, Kevin Muggleton, suggested driving from one end of Africa to the other–“You know, the old ‘Cape to Cairo’ sort of thing.” For the renowned feminist writer Ann Jones, it soon became an expedition with a mission: to find the legendary...
| Author | Robert D. Kaplan |
| ISBN | 1400034523 |
Robert D. Kaplan is one of our leading international journalists, someone who can explain the most complicated and volatile regions and show why they’re relevant to our world. In Surrender or Starve, Kaplan illuminates the fault lines in the Horn of Africa, which is emerging as a crucial region for...
The Shadow of Kilimanjaro: On Foot Across East Africa
| Author | Rick Ridgeway |
| ISBN | 0805053905 |
In one of the most acclaimed travel and adventure books of the past year, Rick Ridgeway chronicles his trek from the summit of Mount Kilimanjaro to the Indian Ocean, through Kenya's famed Tsavo Park. His tale is, according to The Boston Globe, "a gripping account of how it feels to be charged by an incensed...
Dangerous Beauty: Life and Death in Africa: True Stories from a Safari Guide
| Author | Mark C. Ross |
| ISBN | 0786890428 |
On March 1, 1999, American safari guide Mark Ross was camping with four clients in Uganda searching for endangered mountain gorillas. By day's end, two of these clients and six other tourists were dead at the hands of Rwandan rebels. As a man who loves East Africa, Ross felt betrayed by this horror, which...
| Author | William Langewiesche |
| ISBN | 0679750061 |
It is as vast as the United States and so arid that most bacteria cannot survive there. Its loneliness is so extreme it is said thatmigratory birds will land beside travelers, just for the company. William Langewiesche came to the Sahara to see it as its inhabitants do, riding its public transport, braving...
In Search of Enemies: A CIA Story
| Author | John R. Stockwell |
| ISBN | 0735100128 |
As a Marine, Major Stockwell was CIA paramilitary intelligence case officer in the Congo Crisis, Vietnam & the Angolan War of Independence. Beginning a career in '64, he spent six years in Africa, Chief of Base in the Katanga during the Bob Denard invasion in '68, then Chief of Station in Bujumbura,...
Men of Salt: Crossing the Sahara on the Caravan of White Gold
| Author | Michael Benanav |
| ISBN | 1592287727 |
This book is amazing! Men of Salt is a role model of what every travel book should be, an exotic fairy tale, but real.
This book is amazing! I know I said it before, but I need to say it again - AMAZING! Men of Salt is informative without being overwhelming, imaginative without being falsifying, descriptive...
My Mercedes is Not for Sale: From Amsterdam to Ouagadougou...An Auto-Misadventure Across the Sahara
| Author | Jeroen van Bergeijk |
| ISBN | 0767928695 |
“Oh Lord, won’t you buy me a Mercedes Benz?”
—Janis Joplin
A journalist’s intrepid endeavor to sell his used car abroad results in a high-spirited and revealing look at West Africa.
“Look, there’s my car,” I say, pointing at my Mercedes in the parking lot.
“Where?”...
Pass the Butterworms: Remote Journeys Oddly Rendered
| Author | Tim Cahill |
| ISBN | 0375701117 |
In Pass the Butterworms Cahill takes us to the steppes of Mongolia, where he spends weeks on horseback alongside the descendants of Genghis Khan and masters the "Mongolian death trot"; to the North Pole, where he goes for a pleasure dip in 36-degree water; to Irian Jaya New Guinea, where he spends a companionable...
Bright Lights, No City: An African Adventure on Bad Roads with a Brother and a Very Weird Business Plan
| Author | Max Alexander |
| ISBN | 1401324177 |
The hilarious story of two brothers, a truckload of batteries, and a brilliant plan to bring light--and new business opportunities--to Ghana
At age 47, Whit Alexander, the American co-founder of the Cranium board game, decided to start a new business selling affordable goods and services...
Crossing the Heart of Africa: An Odyssey of Love and Adventure
| Author | Julian Smith |
| ISBN | 0061873470 |
Here is the amazing true story of Julian Smith, who retraced the journey of legendary British explorer Ewart ''the Leopard'' Grogan, the first man to cross the length of Africa, in hopes of winning the heart of the woman he loved.
In 1898 the dashing young British explorer Ewart ''the Leopard''...
| Author | Fran Sandham |
| ISBN | 0715637029 |
Inspired by the legendary explorers who first crossed the African heartland, Fran Sandham left the daily grind of London to undertake an extraordinary adventure. He traveled on foot across Africa from the Skeleton Coast on the southwest tip of the African continent through Namibia, Zambia, Malawi,...
