To Timbuktu | 
 enlarge | Author: Mark Jenkins
Publisher: William Morrow & Co
Category: Book
List Price: $25.00
Buy Used: $2.00
You Save: $23.00 (92%)
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Avg. Customer Rating:  15 reviews
Sales Rank: 476773
Media: Hardcover
Edition: 1st
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 224
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1
Dimensions (in): 9.4 x 5.3 x 0.8
ISBN: 0688115853
Dewey Decimal Number: 916.62043
EAN: 9780688115852
ASIN: 0688115853
Publication Date: June 1997
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Product Description
Traveling with Mark Jenkins is a mixture of the daring and the dangerous, the dramatic and the absurd. Here, he and three friends, with the aid of a remarkably intuitive African guide, set out to attempt the first descent of the Niger River, the legendary city of Timbuktu their final goal. Along the way, they are attacked by killer bees, charged by hippos, stalked by crocodiles. They pass through villages where every female child has undergone a clitorectomy, stumble upon a group of completely blind men living in the bush, dance with a hundred naked women. That Jenkins reaches his goal, riding alone across the Sahara on a motorcycle, stands in sharp contrast to what befell those who first tried to find Timbuktu and whose fates the author interweaves with the narrative of his own adventures.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 10 more reviews...
 Fun and quick-reading adventure travel writing November 17, 2007
_To Timbukutu_ by Mark Jenkins is an enjoyable and quick read, more adventure travel writing than anything though with some history and a little commentary woven through it. Essentially, the book is one main narrative interspersed with two other narratives. The heart of the book is the account of how the author and three of his friends reached the head of the Niger River in West Africa and were able to journey down its most dangerous sections in kayaks, starting where the river was barely large enough for their one-man boats, contending with rapids, waterfalls, debris in the water, wild currents, hippos, and crocodiles. This main narrative would break from time to time to follow one of two other narratives; either describing adventures the author and one of his friends on the current expedition had in Europe and mostly in Africa a number of years ago (fresh out of high school) or an account of the legion of (very unlucky) European explorers who tried to solve the questions of the source and even the direction the Niger River flowed as well as the location of the fabled city of Timbuktu.
I really liked Jenkin's writing style as he was quite descriptive and very witty. I loved how he described in his story of himself and his friend Mike, bored with Europe, when they both decided to go to Africa. "It was a word from the boundlessness of childhood. Big and deep as the sky." Or how he described that there were only certain times in your life when you can do certain things, such as to go out to see the world. If you waited too long to go, "the seeds of cynicism and fearfulness have already taken root and you shall be a loathsome traveler."
A good book, for once I don't have a lot to say about something I have read. While not action-movie standards of adventure, Jenkins did describe an interesting experience. While he didn't give as detailed a portrait of the lives of Africans as other books I have read, there were some very memorable scenes and people in this book. I liked reading about the many explorers who attempted the Niger and to reach Timbuktu, though I had read much of that before and in greater detail. I guess what I liked most was his writing style; his put-you-there descriptiveness of what he saw and experienced.
 BETWEEN STROKES March 12, 2007
My Dad loved this book. For all the rivers he never paddled it surprised me. But after many years of carrying it from place to place I read it, and then I understood. It wasn't the water, the boats, or Timbuktu, it was simply the act of traveling.
We had traveled a lot together and when he didn't go I always made it a point to call him en route. From the Champe De Elysse, a mountain meadow in Yosemite, wherever I was we kept in touch. Mark Jenkins is a veteran traveler and his wife, like my Dad gets the touch via postcard. She knows he'll go, and that they will miss each other, but they made a deal and it works for them so he goes.
With descriptions that sometimes seem like poetry Mark draws us along on his trip to the mythical Timbuktu. But that's not the only trip we are on in this book. It is cleverly spliced with other trips from other times, some his, some from famous or almost famous others. The delight is to sift thru these ancillary tales and then drop back into the current tent, village, or boat.
Of course we have to have traveling companions and our group is like most, sometimes adversarial, but mostly content to go with the flow, when there is flow, and it's not too...well, you get the picture.
Amidst the companions come others to guide, to tote, to banter, to question. All showing up to play their part in the adventure. And like us all wishing it was them that was putting the boat together ready to sail off with the morning dew to places never seen by most but forever to be remembered by my Dad, Mark, his wife, and all those who helped and were touched along the way.
To Timbuktu has all that a travel book should December 23, 2000
6 out of 6 found this review helpful
To Timbuktu combines the three things necessary for a great travel book: adventure, history, and humor. The central theme of the book is Jenkins search for the source of the Niger River, but that is merely the rack from which Jenkins explores issues such as friendship, humanity, and cultural differences. That said this book is not dense or slow. In fact it is an extremely quick read. Jenkins writing is sometimes boastful and sometimes self-effacing, but always efficient and entertaining.Some people here have criticized the "machoism" in this book. Maybe I fail to understand, but if they have problems with him carrying a gun or dancing with "100 naked women", I submit that their criticisms are quibblesome. Carrying a gun may or may not be necessary, but it is beyond a minor part in the book. As for the naked women, my question is: Is it true? If so, why not write it. At heart though, these criticisms miss the greater part of the book which is the interaction between people (Jenkins w/ his fellow travelers, the travelers w/ their guide, previous explorers w/ the indigenous population). It is here where To Timbuktu shines. If their criticism goes deeper then I believe that they fail to understand what travel literature is all about. It is about the quest. The quest to do something you are not quite sure that you can accomplish. The quest to learn about those different than you. If this is "machoism" I hope it lives in us all. To criticize it is to deny the validity of all grasps for greater knowledge about ourself and others. Maybe these people would rather read about my travels from refrigerator to couch to restroom to bed, but I don't think that would make a very interesting travelogue and, while it may be revealing about me, I doubt that it would tell us much about the diverse peoples of the world. Getting off my soapbox, I can sum up, in short, by saying that this book turned me into a connoisseur of travel literature and I am thankful for the experience.
Couldn't disagree more with those in here October 8, 2000
who chastise Jenkins for his "machismo" and affix to him the "Ugly American" label. In a genre literally *filled* with unself-critical machismo, with authors who suffer from bloated senses of their missions and themselves and with ordinary wanderings striving unsuccessfully toward the Epic, this book stands apart.The author, while guilty of selfishness (which he criticizes himself for) and boyish stupidity (ditto) is hardly the testosterone-addled and unself-conscious dunderhead some have here made him out to be. He is, on the contrary, self-effacing, humorous, and humane (his praise for the people he meets and the people who aid him in his adventures is sincere, uncondescending). The book, moreover, is masterfully wrought: it is at once a chronicle of West Africa's colonizers (whose follies throw the author's own into relief), a first-person account of the explorer's lunacy in the late 20th century and an incredible portrait of a friendship (whose coda concludes the book and transforms an already successful travelogue into something altogether more moving than you expect upon opening its covers).
A great mix of adventure and history March 22, 2000
7 out of 7 found this review helpful
I have read the book twice in the past year and enjoyed it both times. With 3 different storylines (doing the Niger River source to sea, a boyhood trip to Europe and Africa, and the history of European attempts to understand the Niger and visit Timbuktu) this book is a joy to read. You experience the trip and the mental thoughts that go through the author's head, as well as some of the philosophical issues that are encountered in the trip (guns, pregnant wives, etc). My recommendation: Buy it.
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