Next on our holiday reading list: true travel adventures written by women. Our guest today is Dorothy Shamah who is headed to Guatamala for a Spanish immersion program next spring. Shamah is a former English teacher whose short stories and novels focus on travel. I'll let Dorothy take it from here:
Women tend to focus on the people they encounter and the epiphanies they experience when writing about travel experiences. One of these six exceptional memoirs written by traveling women might be an appreciated holiday gift or great holiday reading.
Told in letters: Lady Mary’s adventures as she travels from
England to the Ottoman Empire in 1717. She
provides insights into the courts of Europe as well as the perils of traveling
by coach across warring nations. Her humorous descriptions of Muslim women in
Constantinople offer a glance into a world no men can offer.
A Lady’s Life in the Rocky Mountains by Isabella Bird.
Bird’s letters home to Edinburgh about her six month stay in
Colorado’s high country, as she travels from San Francisco by rail to Colorado in
1873, then switches to horseback for the duration of her winter trip. Her desperado takes her to the top of 14,000
foot peaks.
Kingsley’s witty memoir of her travels in 1893 through Sierra
Leone, Angola and Gabon. She reaches the
top of Mt. Cameroon along with villages of head-hunters. Vivid descriptions of a
necklace of leeches, an attack on a leopard, and friendships with native
peoples are peppered with humor and self-deprecating heroism.
Murphy’s account of her crossing into South Africa in 1993 to
cycle six thousand miles through Afrikaans and black townships to Cape Town.
Davidson’s 1992 travels through Rajasthan (on the western
border of India) with the Rabari nomads on their yearly migration. Her return
to Jodhpur on foot with her own camels ends in devastating alienation. The land
overwhelms. The story is mesmerizing.
In the late 1990s, Kalak (against all advice) trekked from Port
Moresby on the south of Papua New Guinea through the high lands (south of
the equator) to the island's north shore. She found stone-age
cultures, government officials, missionaries and barely evaded Indonesian soldiers at the border. Follow her footsteps and be amazed.
Enjoy. Perhaps one of
these stories will encourage a woman in your life (or you!) to engage in the tradition of
travel.
Dorothy Shamah can be found on her author page on Amazon.
Follow her blog at
http://www.kookaburraseranade.blogspot.com
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