Turkestan Solo

Book excerpt: Ella Maillart was the adventurous Swiss woman who made her name as an intrepid explorer and one of the most remarkable woman travelers of the early twentieth century. An amazing sports woman, she first represented her country as the only woman competitor at the 1924 Paris Olympics in the single-handed boat-sailing contest, then later raced for Switzerland as a member of the international ski team. Yet these outdoor activities only developed Maillart's insatiable curiosity to travel east, leaving behind the confines of her early life in Geneva in search of the perfect life that she was instinctively seeking. Her later adventures took her across many continents and various oceans. Maillart sailed the Mediterranean in a yawl, traveled with famed travel English travel writer Peter Fleming from Peking to Kashmir, explored Tibet with a half-wild tiger-cat in search of spiritual enlightenment, and finally drove 4,000 miles from war-torn Europe to the fabled Khyber Pass in a battered Ford car. Yet her solo journey through Central Asia in the early 1930s was considered to be a highlight of her adventure-filled life. Setting off from the Tien Shan mountains of Mongolia, Maillart rode horses and camels to the far away walls of fabled Bokhara. "Turkestan Solo" is her vivid account of this wonderful, mysterious and dangerous portion of the world, complete with its Kirghiz eagle hunters, lurking Soviet secret police, and the timeless nomads that still inhabited the desolate steppes of Central Asia. If any book can give its reader the ability to look back in time, this one does, written as it was by one of the world's foremost female equestrian explorers. Amply illustrated, it remains a timeless adventure classic.