To Timbuktu for a Haircut: A Journey Through West Africa - Softcover

Antonson, Rick

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1550028057 ISBN 13: 9781550028058

Publisher: Dundurn, 2008

Synopsis

Historically rich, remote, and once unimaginably dangerous for travellers, Timbuktu still teases with "Find me if you can." Rick Antonson's encounters with entertaining train companions Ebou and Ussegnou, a mysterious cook called Nema, and intrepid guide Zak all make you want to pack up and leave for Timbuktu tomorrow.

As Antonson travels in Senegal and Mali by train, four-wheel drive, river pinasse, camel, and foot, he tells of fourteenth-century legends, eighteenth-century explorers, and today's endangered existence of Timbuktu's 700,000 ancient manuscripts in what scholars have described as the most important archaeological discovery since the Dead Sea Scrolls.

Think Eric Newby's A Short Walk in the Hindu Kush or Redmond O'Hanlon's Into the Heart of Borneo and you begin to see what kind of writer Rick Antonson is. To Timbuktu for a Haircut combines wry humour with shrewd observation to deliver an armchair experience that will linger in the mind long after the last page is read.

About this title

From the Inside Flap:

Antonson combines wry humour with shrewd observation to deliver an armchair experience to the elusive Timbuktu that will linger long after the last page is read.

About the Author:

Rick Antonson is the president and CEO of Tourism Vancouver and a director of the Pacific Asia Travel Association. He has had adventures in Tibet and Nepal, on the Trans-Siberian Railway, and in Libya and North Korea, among others. The co-author of Slumach’s Gold: In Search of a Legend, he lives in Vancouver.

About this edition

• Publisher: Dundurn
• Publication date: 2008
• ISBN 10: 1550028057
• ISBN 13: 9781550028058
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 256