Salak is a good writer and a very determined person. Overall, this was an interesting travel/adventure book. But the book's weakness is that Salak wants this to be more than what it really is, a physical challenge with some unpleasant cross-cultural encounters. She seems to want to convince both the reader and herself that this was some great experience of enlightenment, even if she can't offer any evidence that this is the case. Also, she over-emphasizes her lack of preparation or research. She claims to be without contact with the outside world for most of the trip, without any access to medical or physical assistance. Excuse me, but wouldn't that fancy photographer's boat have had access to a satellite phone? And was there any reason you needed to tear off down the river vomiting and with a fever, rather than resting up a couple of days in a friendly village, as the villagers suggested? This was a good read, but it could have been great if Salak had been more forthright.

About 10 years ago, Kira Salak paddled on her own through the sub-Saharan nation of Mali on the Niger River, heading from a town called Old Segou to the fabled city of Timbuktu, although, truth be told, Timbuktu has been a ramshackle poverty-ridden village for nearly 400 years now, not the onetime cultural and trade center of West Africa.

But this journey wasn't really about seeing the marvels of Timbuktu. It was, first, an homage to an intrepid explorer from the early 19th century named Mungo Park, who eventually lost his life trying to follow the Niger in its giant loop through Africa. But more than that, it was a personal test. Could she persist through hundreds of miles of paddling an inflatable kayak through intense heat, an object of curiosity and sometimes anger to the people she passes along the way.

Some of what she feared most -- crocodiles and hippos -- were hardly a threat, except for one day late in the trip, and even then, the hippos were docile. The real challenge of her trip was the people. Time and time again, all villagers along the river seemed to care about was that she was white and might have money. Nearly every time she landed, villagers would crowd around her, shouting, touching her, demanding money, and it would take a village elder to sometimes physically beat people away so she could go to the chief and pay tribute for food and a place to sleep.

But that was often redeemed by individual encounters with villagers who treated her with kindness or took her under their wings.

As she neared the end of the journey, she encountered particularly hostile Tuaregs -- descendants of Arab Moors who once conquered the region, and who unofficially kept African slaves from a particular tribe. She was struck with dysentery and could hardly eat, and then, barely having recovered, she wanted to negotiate with her remaining money to free two women slaves. Finding out what happens will be one of your rewards for reading this book.

This is not a travelogue that uncovers new wildlife at every turn or delves into the ethnology of each tribe. And yet Salak writes so well that she kept me engaged throughout the trip, even when she was writing about her exhaustion, boredom or frustration.

A fascinating journey.

This book is really two stories - the story of the country of Mali along the Niger River as seen by Salak as she retraces the route of Mungo Park (the first Western Explorer to explore the interior of Mali and to reach Timbuktu), and the personal journey of the author, Kira Salak.
The incredible descriptions of life on the Niger River brought me along with Salak on her grueling journey and allowed me to experience scenes that few Westerners have ever seen. Salak's descriptions of the culture, beliefs and lifestyles of the tribes living in Mali along the Niger River were informative and educational. Her story of slavery in Timbuktu is one of the most detailed I have seen. If you want an accurate view of life in Africa, this is a must read book.
The second story, the personal journey of the author, was one of the most inspiring I have read. As you journey with Salak you will find yourself joining her as she overcomes extreme obstacles such as ignoring the pain of a sprained wrist as she kayaked, dealing with Muslim extremists and occasionally escaping from them, finding food and a safe place to rest each night, kayaking through storms, etc. How often in life do we find small obstacles stopping us? Salak teaches us that we have the power to overcome even the most difficult obstacles in life.
Of course, if you love kayaking, this is a book that will inspire you from the first stroke of her paddle to the very last stroke.
What makes this book really great is Salak's writing style that draws you in, pulls you along and puts you right there in the kayak with her. A great work of non-fiction that I highly recommend for anyone who wants a good book to read.

So many thoughts went through my head as I read this book:
1. I am a slug. I need to get out and experience the world
2. This would be a good book for Terry. The parallels being pushing your body to its limit. The difference was that Kira went through hostile areas while paddling her 600 miles....I am not sure if PGH was hostile to you when you ran through it----I hope not.
3. The poor Malian women...some are slaves, some have horrible procedures done to them. I can't imagine.
4. How materialistic we (Americans) are.
5. How much I enjoy being clean and fed.
I think this is a good read. I can see that some of her experiences from this journey were used in her fictionalized book.

This woman has guts. She is relentless, and she can write.

Kira Salak paddles a kayak 600 miles down the Niger River all alone. She faces storms, hunger illness and heat. She stays in villages along the way never sure if they will be friendly and kind or angry and mean, they are always greedy occasionally unexpectedly nice. Documented for National Geographic and amazing. Big change from the arctic stories I have been reading.

Although the nation of Mali does not often cross my radar as an interesting place to read about, is a desperately poor country to boot [1], as someone who likes reading books about interesting travels [2], this book caught my attention, as cruel journeys are something that sounds very Nathanish to me at least.  And although the author's religious beliefs and her openness to witchcraft were not something I greatly appreciated reading about, and her feminism was certainly off-putting, there was still much in this book to appreciate concerning the author's concern for humanity and inhumanity and her clear-eyed look at what made Mali so poor and what kept it from making strides towards development.  The book comes from a National Geographic grant, and that is not an organization I have a great deal of fondness for despite my own great love of maps and geography, but the author herself has an impressive gift of eloquence and an interest in history and quirky people in history as she attempts to recreate one of the most notable journeys in history, that of the Scottish explorer Mungo Park, to whom she is a worthy successor in her own right.

This book is not an obvious contender for the most exciting travel book one could read, with about two hundred pages taking up numbered chapters of the author's trip from Bamako to Old Sègou as staging for her trip and then the 600 miles north and east along the Niger River to Timbuktu through some of the most desolate and impoverished country in the entire world.  The author struggles through an injured hand as she kayaks by herself beside villages and adopts a certain pattern:  Canoe all day, find a friendly village and bribe its elder, and stay with a family overnight before repeating the cycle.  As the trip goes on the author runs short of food and has to deal with increasingly unfriendly people, as it is clear that some of the tribes of Mali are far friendlier than others.  She has intermittent meetings with a French photographer and his ginger girlfriend, but for the most part she is alone to observe the countryside and its people, animals, and plants, to feel the heat of the Sahara sun, and to muse upon the way that the country still very closely resembles how it was more than two hundred years ago when Mungo Park took his groundbreaking journey to explore the Niger all the way to the sea, though he died along the way.  Through the trip the author deals with violence and harassment, suffers some mishaps, explores Malian witchcraft and animist beliefs and charms, and buys the freedom of a couple of slaves at the conclusion before leaving the country.

What is it that makes this journey so cruel?  A great deal of Mali's poverty appears to be its own fault, with horrific violence against women, blind hatred towards the United States, enduring slavery, and an endemic culture of bribery and corruption that actively punishes those who try to get ahead through entrepreneurial spirit.  The author is certainly strong-willed and clever, but one appears convinced that this author's drive to travel in such dangerous and desolate territory springs from her own deeply painful personal experiences, and possibly even traumatic ones.  The author's insight appears to come from a place of deep compassion with those who suffer injustice and if she can come off as a bit strident sometimes, she also shows herself to be a person who needs plenty of solitary time to read and reflect and loves the solitary nature of her slow journey by boat in one of the world's longest rivers through one of the world's most obscure and forgotten regions.  This book is not colored with nostalgia, but nor is it a screed against the people of Mali, but rather it is the observations and reflections of a clear-eyed and both friendly and wary world traveler who is driven by a rather intense desire to put the world at least a little bit more aright as it is within her power to do so.

[1] See, for example:

https://edgeinducedcohesion.blog/2012...

https://edgeinducedcohesion.blog/2016...

[2] See, for example:

https://edgeinducedcohesion.blog/2017...

https://edgeinducedcohesion.blog/2017...

https://edgeinducedcohesion.blog/2017...

Cruelest Journey: Six Hundred Miles To Timbuktu by Kira Salak was overall a very boring, slow, unappetizing novel. Don't get me wrong it was very interesting at times and also a touching story but I personally would have rather read the dictionary. Being a 15 year old boy it's very hard to enjoy a book that reminds me of a textbook or packet I'd read in class. I did, however, enjoy reading about the culture of each tribe or village and how as she went farther down the river they changed. I also think it was very interesting to read something that is, in a way, putting nature (in this case the niger river) as the antagonist of the book. All in all I would suggest this book to a very mature audience and definitely not to someone that is my age or uninterested in history or nonfiction novels.

Amazing tale of a ballsy woman's solo journey up the Niger in a kayak. Salak is a gifted descriptive writer who explores her inner self as well as her physical/cultural experiences quite well.

Book should include photos as they are prominently mentioned while they're taken and part of the story.

Loved this book! This book follows Kira as she becomes the first Westerner in history to kayak solo down the Niger river from the capital Bamako to Timbuktu without dying. She gives you so much history all wrapped in the package of her adventure. I learned about North African history, especially Mali, some of the area’s cultures, and the present day condition of life along the Niger. We follow her into the homes of Malians to get a close up look at life in Mali. We see cultures change from one local tribe to the next.

I liked this book a lot, but my five stars come with a warning. This book contains an extremely graphic description of the female genital mutilation still practiced in some parts of Mali. Kira also goes to see several very real local witch doctors (read: not for the tourists) and these parts get very creepy.

A woman takes a 600-mile-long journey down the Niger river tracing the steps of a 19th-century explorer, Mungo Park. Mungo had to navigate thieves, aggressive beggars, language barriers, unpredictable villagers, heat, and storms. He was forced to sell a lock of his hair as a "charm" at one point to get food. What characterizes such a journey now? The same. This has to be one of the toughest things a woman has ever done alone. And why does she do it? Because "What counts as 'important,' is never entirely clear ... but paddling on the Niger--that that is a real doing."

Oh, and she buys two slave women in Timbuktu and frees them at the end.

I love Kira Salak.

My dream to travel to Timbuktu is put on hold as slavery is still rife there.