Description
Nearly two decades earlier, 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 reach Timbuktu, men of unconquerable will, vanity, and perseverance, who would die beheaded, speared, or eaten alive by illness.
jhm (verified owner) –
“To Timbuktu is a grand adventure told with wit and candor; devoid of false heroism, but not of recklessness. I’d have given anything to go along with Mark Jenkins on his exciting trek. Bravo!”
–Richard Selzer
“Eloquent and unflinching, romantic without sentimentality, Jenkins’ voice is an oasis in the desert of contemporary adventure-travel writing.”
–Ted Kerasote
jhm (verified owner) –
“Jenkins and his buddy, Mike, outdoorsmen and explorers from Wyoming with wanderlust in their blood, leave their wives back in the States (six months pregnant) for West Africa and the Niger River. With two companions, they set out to kayak from the source of the river to the sea, a feat never before accomplished; they intend to be guided by the specter and myth of Timbuktu. Interweaving his tale with the adventures of Mungo Park, Rene Caillie, and other explorers who paved the way, Jenkins portrays himself as a modern-day adventurer on a rapidly domesticated planet, a Zen Hemingway–macho yet sensitive, respectful yet indignant. He feels guilty about leaving his wife back home but is not willing to shorten his trip; he argues with a distinguished African chief regarding the ancient ritual of female circumcision. “Destiny is the coincidence of the random with the inevitable,” he writes, waxing poetic with that familiar brand of road wisdom and traveler’s koans. Jenkins evocatively conjures encounters with bees, crocodiles, hippos, waterfalls, corrupt officials, mercenaries, and soldiers.
–Booklist
jhm (verified owner) –
“Timbuktu. It’s more than a mere place name, of course. More, even, than a metaphor. It’s an entire one-word allegory. Most of us know this even if we don’t quite know why. In To Timbuktu, Mark Jenkins reveals that this plain, dusty town is, like the summit of a mountain, no more interesting than countless other geographical points. But the pursuit of the summit: Therein lies the journey of life.
Grand quests are as old as humankind and as profound as literature itself. Jenkins has enriched both—our species and its literature—first with Off the Map, the tale of his 7,000-mile trans-Russian bike ride, and now with To Timbuktu. The latter masterfully weaves a triptych of adventure stories into a seamless artwork: Jenkins’ first-descent of the headwaters of the Niger by kayak with three friends–an expedition that later transmogrifies into a solo overland journey by motorcycle; his teenage African wanderings with lifelong adventure-partner Mike Moe, also in pursuit of Timbuktu; and the fascinating tales of historical attempts to reach the mysterious city and its mythical gold. These olden travels add more than historical depth to Jenkins’ story. The bravura of these explorers, who almost universally died during or as a result of their journeys, provides context for the distinctly primal urges pulsing through the hearts of Jenkins and Moe.
For this duo exploration is adventure, and risks sometimes are taken for the boyish joy of risking. Readers unwilling to be swept up by such imprudent passions are sometimes repelled by Mark and Mike’s excellent adventuring. The rest of us shake our heads and wonder if we’re even capable of filling our life-cups this full.
High in the Niger’s headwaters the four kayakers find the river sweeps through dangerous walls of brush, at which Jenkins gleefully flings himself. “Without thinking I begin hauling myself forward through the maze, my bow cleaving curtains of interlaced leaves, the keel rocking, the hull scraping, black water catching me and throwing me and it’s hell and I love it and the web is spreading and my boat shudders and I give one final heave-ho and I’m out, gliding over open water in dazzling sunshine.” When all four boaters emerge downstream, two are furious. “This isn’t boating!” they exclaim in a fear-induced rage. “Nope,” reply Moe and Jenkins, “This is exploring.”
–John Harlin III
The Explorers Journal