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Books > Sport & Leisure > Travel & holiday > Travel writing > General
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Cry of the Kalahari
(Paperback)
Delia Owens, Mark Owens; Introduction by Ben Fogle
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R425
R379
Discovery Miles 3 790
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The incredible memoir by international bestselling author of Where
The Crawdads Sing, Delia Owens and her then partner Mark Owens',
charting their time researching wildlife in the Kalahari Desert.
Reissued and in full colour, for the first time since its original
publication. In the early 1970s, carrying little more than a change
of clothes and a pair of binoculars, Mark and Delia Owens caught a
plane to Africa, bought a third-hand Land Rover, and drove deep
into the Kalahari Desert. There they lived for seven years, in an
unexplored area with no roads, no people, and no source of water
for thousands of square miles. In this vast wilderness the Owenses
began their zoology research, working alongside lions, brown
hyenas, jackals, giraffes, and the many other creatures they came
to know. Cry of the Kalahari is a gripping account of how two young
Americans survived the dangers of living in one of the last
pristine areas on Earth. Reissued for the first time since its
original publication in 1984, this beautiful new edition contains
never-seen-before, colour photographs of Mark and Delia on their
adventure of a lifetime. 'A remarkable story beautifully told . . .
Among such classics as Goodall's In the Shadow of Man and Fossey's
Gorillas in the Mist' Chicago Tribune 'For anyone interested in
animals or in real life adventure, this book is a must' Jane
Goodall 'Extraordinary . . . How the couple overcome the hazards of
the desert and came to appreciate its living richness makes
fascinating reading . . . Read their remarkable book to be
delighted, moved, and awed' People Magazine
Bestselling author Giles Tremlett traverses the rich and varied
history of Spain, from prehistoric times to today, in a brief,
accessible primer for visitors, curious readers and hispanophiles.
'Tremlett is a fascinating socio-cultural guide, as happy to
discuss Spain's World Cup win as its Moorish rule' Guardian
'Negotiates Spain's chaotic history with admirable clarity and
style' The Times Spain's position on Europe's south-western corner
has exposed it to cultural, political and actual winds blowing from
all quadrants. Africa lies a mere nine miles to the south. The
Mediterranean connects it to the civilizational currents of
Phoenicians, Romans, Carthaginians, and Byzantines as well as the
Arabic lands of the near east. Bronze Age migrants from the Russian
steppe were amongst the first to arrive. They would be followed by
Visigoths, Arabs, Napoleonic armies and many more invaders and
immigrants. Circular winds and currents linked it to the American
continent, allowing Spain to conquer and colonize much of it. As a
result, Spain has developed a sort of hybrid vigour. Whenever it
has tried to deny this inevitable heterogeneity, it has required
superhuman effort to fashion a 'pure' national identity - which has
proved impossible to maintain. In Espana, Giles Tremlett argues
that, in fact, that lack of a homogenous identity is Spain's
defining trait.
In this thoughtful, informative account of a journey from Ho Chi
Minh City and the Mekong Delta to Hanoi and Halong Bay, Zoe
Schramm-Evans delves behind the cliche-ridden images of Vietnam to
discover a country poised on the brink of remarkable social and
economic change.
The Pony Express has a hold on the American imagination wildly out
of proportion to its actual contribution to the history and
development of the West. It lasted less than eighteen
months—about the amount of time it took author Scott Alumbaugh to
plan and ride the route—and utterly failed by every measure of
success attributed to it. The only reason it did not fade out of
public consciousness, as did the far more successful Butterfield
mail, is publicity. In the Pony’s case, a thirty-year campaign of
publicity mounted by Buffalo Bill Cody, who mislead the public by
claiming to have been a Pony Express rider, and lied outright by
claiming to have made the longest Pony Express run. More than
anyone, Buffalo Bill kept the legend alive by including a Pony
Express segment throughout the run of his Wild West show. But while
the Pony Express may be among the least significant developments of
its era, it is the most iconic. One can’t really understand the
Pony Express—what it stood for, what it accomplished, why it came
about at all—without understanding the far more interesting
historical milieu from which it grew: Three wars (Mexican, Utah,
and Paiute); two gold rushes (California and Pike’s Peak); the
overland emigration of hundreds of thousands to Oregon and
California; the exodus of tens of thousands of Mormons to Utah. On
the Pony Express Trail: One Man's Bikepacking Journey to Discover
History from a Different Kind of Saddle recounts the author’s
experience bikepacking the Pony Express Trail over five weeks
during June and July 2021, and uses the trail as a prism through
which to survey a wide spectrum of mid-1800s historical events.
Sixty-two-year-old Alumbaugh rode the Pony Express Bikepacking
Route from St. Joseph, MO to Salt Lake City, UT, over 1,400 miles,
mostly off-road, sometimes through very remote territory. The
narrative follows his day-to-day experiences and impressions: the
challenges, the sites he visited, the country he rode through, and
interactions with the people he met.
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