The Cruelest Journey
Categories: Travel , Outdoors & Nature , Nonfiction
Several years ago I read an amazing novel titled Water Music by T.C. Boyle. It's a rich, darkly comic story which focuses on a character named Mungo Park and his expedition of the Niger River during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries . The novel is full of energetic, hilarious, and often bawdy prose. I was about halfway through the book when I learned (somehow or another) that Mungo Park was an actual historical figure.
Since then, I've been interested in finding a more factual account of Mungo Park and his exploits in Africa. So, I was happy to find the book The Cruelest Journey: 600 miles to Timbuktu by Kira Salak. On this solo journey, the author traversed the Niger by kayak and modeled her course after Mungo Park's own journey there over 200 years ago.
The author does a great job at drawing parallels between her experiences traveling the Niger and those of Mungo Park's, whose journals provided her with invaluable information along the way. Because of the nearly impenetrable jungles and desolate remoteness of the region, she notes that very little has likely changed there since the time Park made the same journey. This includes many of the tribal peoples she came into contact with along the river.
To put it mildly, this is one scary trip to undertake. There are potential diseases, possible body-mangling encounters with hippos and crocodiles, hostile tribes, lack of food, and dangerous waters to name just a few. And through the course of the book, Salak makes all of these fears palpable in a way that makes you glad you are simply reading about it. The fact that she is the first person to successfully complete this journey solo makes it all the more remarkable.
Before this book was written, Kira Salak had contributed a feature article about the expedition in the magazine National Geographic Adventure titled "Mungo Made Me Do It." For those who enjoy adventure travel writing, it would be hard to find something more compelling than this.
