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To Timbuktu
With the help of an intuitive African guide, the author and three friends set out to sail down the Niger River to Timbuktu, meeting with killer bees, hippopotami, crocodiles, blind bushmen, and a hundred naked women along the way.
224 pages, Hardcover
First published June 1, 1997
3 people are currently reading
354 people want to read
About the author
Mark Jenkins
66 books82 followersLibrarian Note: There is more than one author by this name in the Goodreads database.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 42 reviews
March 28, 2013
I gave this two stars ( meaning 'it was ok') because there were some interesting moments, and I did actually finish the book. But most of the time I was either angry, cringing, or laughing at things that weren't supposed to be funny. The guy isn't shy about being top-dog.
I would love to travel the river between the Fouta Dialon in Guinea to Bamako with a series of local guides. It wouldn't have been that difficult to arrange and you wouldn't need to smuggle guns into Guinea to do it. But then I guess you wouldn't be able to claim that you were the first to do it in your own kayak. So to me it really had the feel of a stunt rather than a genuine exploration. And I was left with the impression that the author wanted everything to seem/be riskier than was necessary.
I happended to live as a Peace Corps volunteer in one of the Mali villages at the same time he passed. I spent a lot of time on the river, but I didn't have the luck to see these guys come through. I'm sure I would have enjoyed talking to them about what the river was like upstream across the Guinea border.
I see that the author has several books about great adventures he's been on. If you enjoy these kinds of books, maybe it would be better to start with a different one than this. With that much success as an author, maybe his more recent books express a little more humility. However, I can see how people would give this book five stars because stuff happens when you set out to make stuff happen. But for me it was an uncomfortable read.
I would love to travel the river between the Fouta Dialon in Guinea to Bamako with a series of local guides. It wouldn't have been that difficult to arrange and you wouldn't need to smuggle guns into Guinea to do it. But then I guess you wouldn't be able to claim that you were the first to do it in your own kayak. So to me it really had the feel of a stunt rather than a genuine exploration. And I was left with the impression that the author wanted everything to seem/be riskier than was necessary.
I happended to live as a Peace Corps volunteer in one of the Mali villages at the same time he passed. I spent a lot of time on the river, but I didn't have the luck to see these guys come through. I'm sure I would have enjoyed talking to them about what the river was like upstream across the Guinea border.
I see that the author has several books about great adventures he's been on. If you enjoy these kinds of books, maybe it would be better to start with a different one than this. With that much success as an author, maybe his more recent books express a little more humility. However, I can see how people would give this book five stars because stuff happens when you set out to make stuff happen. But for me it was an uncomfortable read.
May 31, 2012
I liked the journey but grew irritated with the narrator. Mr. Jenkins had such contempt for two other fellow travelers because they didn't want to participate in the sophomoric highjinks that he and his best friend pulled. It seemed that Jenkins and his friend were either thinking about their pregnant wives or trying to get themselves killed so that they could not return. He puts himself in the foreground while other travel writers put themselves mostly in the background and let the places and people they are writing about be the story.
Read this to meet Sori, Kourou and Fali and the little girl who rides in his kayak.
Read this to meet Sori, Kourou and Fali and the little girl who rides in his kayak.
July 17, 2020
One of the reasons this book caught my attention is that I was working in Sierra Leone several years before Mark Jenkins started his trip down the Niger River in 1990. I traveled up country on the border of Guinea with some missionary friends and have never forgotten the steady beat of drums in the darkness, a reminder of the what a different world I’d just entered.
Mark Jenkins, a travel fanatic and writer, sets out with three friends to attempt their first descent of the Niger River in kayaks with the goal of reaching the legendary city of Timbuktu. The river is 150 miles from the Atlantic and they went through Sierra Leone to access the river. The scope of Jenkin’s journey also reminded me of Graham Greene’s, “Journey Without Maps” and Joseph Conrad’s “The Heart of Darkness”, two of the most compelling African travel stories of all time. “Journey Without Maps” tells of Green’s first trip through Liberia and Sierra Leone in 1935 when he utilized porters to carry him part of the way in hammocks. The “Blue Guides”, a series of authoritative travel books highlighted the many diseases one could find in West Africa, include elephantiasis, leprosy, yaws, malaria, hookworm, schistosomiasis, dysentery, smallpox, and nutritional conditions”
Even in more recent history, the health challenges faced by Jenkins and his friends were impressive as he described, “…I got bitten by a scorpion and …shivered through the fever. Mike got something in his stomach so rough he couldn’t walk for two days. I got an infection in my foot that oozed red pus. We didn’t have any drugs and the villagers had worse afflictions than we did…Eventually we became as lean as the jackals we heard howl at night out in the dunes.”
He also tells of blackflies which were as “common as dirt from which a worm develops and eventually reaches eyeballs, where it dies, taking with it the sight of the human. Evidently, slow rivers have snails with blood flukes in them which bore painlessly through the skin and attack the intestines or bladder, and then “They find blood in their piss and shit. This disease is called bilharzia. In the worst case the fluke devours the liver, a mortal bilious disorder.” Not for the faint of heart.
Graham explains the psychological side of traveling through the hinterlands of West Africa, “It is not then any part of Africa which acts so strongly on this unconscious mind; certainly no part where the white settler has been most successful in reproducing the conditions of his country, its morals and its popular art. A quality of darkness is needed, of the inexplicable…”
Jenkins’ journey takes place in this relatively unknown part of West Africa but first they want t find the source of the river which eventually come to a half-hour walk downhill to find, “the path a trough through blue shadows. The jungle is so dense we don’t see the river until we are standing on its bank…The river is a brown torrent. It appears out of a cave or jungle, shoots beneath us, rushes headlong through the trees for a short distance, bends and disappears.”
A long the way, Jenkins tells the stories of other explorers like German Friedrich Hornemann who so impressed Napoleon that the general offered to provide him with French passports. Hornemann went on to become fluent in Arabic and became a Muslim in order to pass from city to city. He posed as a desert merchant and he went through the Saharan desert and followed it within “three hundred miles of its terminus in the Gulf of Guinea before dying of dysentery.”
A French explorer, Rene Caillie returned to France a national hero after his trek through Africa, including ten days in Timbuktu in 1828. Six years later, “at the age of thirty-nine, plagued by disorders contracted during his journeys in Africa, he died.” But his notoriety was based on his descriptions of Timbuktu, “did not fit the image cradled like a holy grail in the mind of the public. How could the most mysterious city in history be nothing more than a collection of mud buildings, a mere trading post in the desert? Impossible.”
Their adventure got a lot more interesting part way down the river when they hid their gear to visit a local village only to return to find, “The tent was gone. We went into shock immediately raged through the thorn bushes in the dark screaming, cursing and bellowing threats. We kicked and punched empty shadows, scratching the hell out of ourselves….In the morning when we awoke, birds were chirping and the sky was baby blue and we sat up…to a beautiful day. We had finally been released from the burden of possessions. Now we could travel.?
Floating down one of the largest rivers in Africa in a kayak does leave one vulnerable a number of local dangers, ”…suddenly I hear stomping and then a roar and a hippo the size of a garbage struck comes crashing through the trees shaking its mammoth head flopping its mammoth mouth thrusting its pointed tusks. The hippo plunges into the water and is swimming right for me and the other two appear to be following him but I’ve already spun on a dime and am flying for the opposite bank…”
After a trek through the Sahara desert, Jenkins makes his way to Timbuktu and his guide takes him to the infamous library, “a nondescript building that turns out to be a library housing some of the ancient texts of Timbuktu. For hundreds of years Timbuktu was the center of learning for all of West Africa. Muhammad reads to me from the tomes. Stories of the desert. Stories of history. He shows me the pages purled with recursive Arabesque patterns...”
The next day, his guide takes him to the houses where famous white explorers stayed often with a metal plague above the door. The author asks Muhammad why so many special plagues commemorating forgotten white men to which his guide replies, “Because they were the first white men to come to my town. Then he grins, but we were her all along.”
The last scene takes place at his guide’s home for dinner, “A space is made for me in the circle and a rug laid upon the sand. I am asked to sit. Over the fire is a dark kettle….Muhammad explains that the brains and the eyes are the delicacy and that I am the guest of honor. I remove one of the eyeballs with my fingers and eat it. Muhammad plucks out the other, swallowing it whole. We eat the brains together…” This scene reminded me of a lunch I was invited to in Sierra Leone where I almost finished the stew only to be faced with the monkey hand.
One inevitable aspect of a great trek is missing friends and family a long the way. Penniless, and traveling home through Germany, Jenkins, was asked by a family member they were staying with if they missed their home, “We did. We did so much we couldn’t even talk about it. Our homesickness was hidden inside us like a key we had swallowed. We never talked about it because we were still young and embarrassed and believed homesickness was a sign of weakness rather than love.”
The author sums up what the trip meant to him, “All four of us will remember a completely different trip, almost as though we were never together at all. Every journey is unfathomably personal When it is over, you always see yourself as someone different from who you were during the journey, because you are…”
The Boston Sunday Globe review says, “Jenkins weaves a compelling narrative of muscular beauty and emotional honest. He makes us understand what pushes the man who pushes the envelope.” The New York Times says, “There is a melancholy . . . implicit in Mr. Jenkins's writing, that travel involves something futile, a disregard of Pascal's epigram about all evil things coming from man's being unable to sit still in a room. But it is just that touch of melancholy, of regret, of the hopelessness of the quest that gives To Timbuktu its resonance.” A detailed map and several colored photos add to the elegantly described scenes on the Niger River.
About the Author
Mark Jenkins is a global correspondent for Rodale magazines and a former monthly columnist for Outside magazine. Besides writing the critically acclaimed books A Man's Life, The Hard Way, and Off the Map, Jenkins is featured in Best American Travel Writing and has written for Men's Health, Backpacker, Time, the Atlantic Monthly, National Geographic, and other media. When he's not off adventuring, he lives in Laramie, Wyoming.
________________________________________
Product details
• Paperback: 224 pages
• Publisher: Modern Times; 1st edition (May 27, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1594867658
• ISBN-13: 978-1594867651
• Product Dimensions: 5 x 0.7 x 9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 4 ounces
• Customer Reviews: 4.7 out of 5 stars14 customer ratings
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #989,869 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
o #22 in Western Africa Travel
o #26 in Niger & Nigeria Travel Guides
o #51 in Coastal West Africa Travel Guides
About the Reviewer
Walker was a Peace Corps Volunteer in Guatemala and spent over forty years helping disadvantaged people in the developing world. He came to Phoenix as a Senior Director for Food for the Hungry, worked with other groups like Make-A-Wish International and was the CEO of Hagar USA, a Christian-based organization that supports survivors of human trafficking.
His book, Different Latitudes: My Life in the Peace Corps and Beyond, was recognized by the Arizona Literary Association for Non-Fiction and, according to the Midwest Review, “…is more than just another travel memoir. It is an engaged and engaging story of one man’s physical and spiritual journey of self-discovery…”
Several of his articles have been published in Ragazine and WorldView Magazines, Literary Yard, Literary Travelers and Quail BELL. His column in the “Arizona Authors Association” newsletter, is entitled, “The Million Mile Walker Review: What We’re Reading and Why.” One essay was a winner in the Arizona Authors Association literary competition 2020 and one of his “The Yin & Yang of Travel” articles was recognized in the 2020 Solas Literary awards for Best Travel Writing.
His honors include the "Service Above Self" award from Rotary International. He’s the membership chair for “Partnering for Peace” and a board member of “Advance Guatemala. His wife and three children were born in Guatemala. You can learn more at www.MillionMileWalker.com and follow him on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/millionmilew... and www.Guatemalastory.net
Mark Jenkins, a travel fanatic and writer, sets out with three friends to attempt their first descent of the Niger River in kayaks with the goal of reaching the legendary city of Timbuktu. The river is 150 miles from the Atlantic and they went through Sierra Leone to access the river. The scope of Jenkin’s journey also reminded me of Graham Greene’s, “Journey Without Maps” and Joseph Conrad’s “The Heart of Darkness”, two of the most compelling African travel stories of all time. “Journey Without Maps” tells of Green’s first trip through Liberia and Sierra Leone in 1935 when he utilized porters to carry him part of the way in hammocks. The “Blue Guides”, a series of authoritative travel books highlighted the many diseases one could find in West Africa, include elephantiasis, leprosy, yaws, malaria, hookworm, schistosomiasis, dysentery, smallpox, and nutritional conditions”
Even in more recent history, the health challenges faced by Jenkins and his friends were impressive as he described, “…I got bitten by a scorpion and …shivered through the fever. Mike got something in his stomach so rough he couldn’t walk for two days. I got an infection in my foot that oozed red pus. We didn’t have any drugs and the villagers had worse afflictions than we did…Eventually we became as lean as the jackals we heard howl at night out in the dunes.”
He also tells of blackflies which were as “common as dirt from which a worm develops and eventually reaches eyeballs, where it dies, taking with it the sight of the human. Evidently, slow rivers have snails with blood flukes in them which bore painlessly through the skin and attack the intestines or bladder, and then “They find blood in their piss and shit. This disease is called bilharzia. In the worst case the fluke devours the liver, a mortal bilious disorder.” Not for the faint of heart.
Graham explains the psychological side of traveling through the hinterlands of West Africa, “It is not then any part of Africa which acts so strongly on this unconscious mind; certainly no part where the white settler has been most successful in reproducing the conditions of his country, its morals and its popular art. A quality of darkness is needed, of the inexplicable…”
Jenkins’ journey takes place in this relatively unknown part of West Africa but first they want t find the source of the river which eventually come to a half-hour walk downhill to find, “the path a trough through blue shadows. The jungle is so dense we don’t see the river until we are standing on its bank…The river is a brown torrent. It appears out of a cave or jungle, shoots beneath us, rushes headlong through the trees for a short distance, bends and disappears.”
A long the way, Jenkins tells the stories of other explorers like German Friedrich Hornemann who so impressed Napoleon that the general offered to provide him with French passports. Hornemann went on to become fluent in Arabic and became a Muslim in order to pass from city to city. He posed as a desert merchant and he went through the Saharan desert and followed it within “three hundred miles of its terminus in the Gulf of Guinea before dying of dysentery.”
A French explorer, Rene Caillie returned to France a national hero after his trek through Africa, including ten days in Timbuktu in 1828. Six years later, “at the age of thirty-nine, plagued by disorders contracted during his journeys in Africa, he died.” But his notoriety was based on his descriptions of Timbuktu, “did not fit the image cradled like a holy grail in the mind of the public. How could the most mysterious city in history be nothing more than a collection of mud buildings, a mere trading post in the desert? Impossible.”
Their adventure got a lot more interesting part way down the river when they hid their gear to visit a local village only to return to find, “The tent was gone. We went into shock immediately raged through the thorn bushes in the dark screaming, cursing and bellowing threats. We kicked and punched empty shadows, scratching the hell out of ourselves….In the morning when we awoke, birds were chirping and the sky was baby blue and we sat up…to a beautiful day. We had finally been released from the burden of possessions. Now we could travel.?
Floating down one of the largest rivers in Africa in a kayak does leave one vulnerable a number of local dangers, ”…suddenly I hear stomping and then a roar and a hippo the size of a garbage struck comes crashing through the trees shaking its mammoth head flopping its mammoth mouth thrusting its pointed tusks. The hippo plunges into the water and is swimming right for me and the other two appear to be following him but I’ve already spun on a dime and am flying for the opposite bank…”
After a trek through the Sahara desert, Jenkins makes his way to Timbuktu and his guide takes him to the infamous library, “a nondescript building that turns out to be a library housing some of the ancient texts of Timbuktu. For hundreds of years Timbuktu was the center of learning for all of West Africa. Muhammad reads to me from the tomes. Stories of the desert. Stories of history. He shows me the pages purled with recursive Arabesque patterns...”
The next day, his guide takes him to the houses where famous white explorers stayed often with a metal plague above the door. The author asks Muhammad why so many special plagues commemorating forgotten white men to which his guide replies, “Because they were the first white men to come to my town. Then he grins, but we were her all along.”
The last scene takes place at his guide’s home for dinner, “A space is made for me in the circle and a rug laid upon the sand. I am asked to sit. Over the fire is a dark kettle….Muhammad explains that the brains and the eyes are the delicacy and that I am the guest of honor. I remove one of the eyeballs with my fingers and eat it. Muhammad plucks out the other, swallowing it whole. We eat the brains together…” This scene reminded me of a lunch I was invited to in Sierra Leone where I almost finished the stew only to be faced with the monkey hand.
One inevitable aspect of a great trek is missing friends and family a long the way. Penniless, and traveling home through Germany, Jenkins, was asked by a family member they were staying with if they missed their home, “We did. We did so much we couldn’t even talk about it. Our homesickness was hidden inside us like a key we had swallowed. We never talked about it because we were still young and embarrassed and believed homesickness was a sign of weakness rather than love.”
The author sums up what the trip meant to him, “All four of us will remember a completely different trip, almost as though we were never together at all. Every journey is unfathomably personal When it is over, you always see yourself as someone different from who you were during the journey, because you are…”
The Boston Sunday Globe review says, “Jenkins weaves a compelling narrative of muscular beauty and emotional honest. He makes us understand what pushes the man who pushes the envelope.” The New York Times says, “There is a melancholy . . . implicit in Mr. Jenkins's writing, that travel involves something futile, a disregard of Pascal's epigram about all evil things coming from man's being unable to sit still in a room. But it is just that touch of melancholy, of regret, of the hopelessness of the quest that gives To Timbuktu its resonance.” A detailed map and several colored photos add to the elegantly described scenes on the Niger River.
About the Author
Mark Jenkins is a global correspondent for Rodale magazines and a former monthly columnist for Outside magazine. Besides writing the critically acclaimed books A Man's Life, The Hard Way, and Off the Map, Jenkins is featured in Best American Travel Writing and has written for Men's Health, Backpacker, Time, the Atlantic Monthly, National Geographic, and other media. When he's not off adventuring, he lives in Laramie, Wyoming.
________________________________________
Product details
• Paperback: 224 pages
• Publisher: Modern Times; 1st edition (May 27, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1594867658
• ISBN-13: 978-1594867651
• Product Dimensions: 5 x 0.7 x 9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 4 ounces
• Customer Reviews: 4.7 out of 5 stars14 customer ratings
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #989,869 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
o #22 in Western Africa Travel
o #26 in Niger & Nigeria Travel Guides
o #51 in Coastal West Africa Travel Guides
About the Reviewer
Walker was a Peace Corps Volunteer in Guatemala and spent over forty years helping disadvantaged people in the developing world. He came to Phoenix as a Senior Director for Food for the Hungry, worked with other groups like Make-A-Wish International and was the CEO of Hagar USA, a Christian-based organization that supports survivors of human trafficking.
His book, Different Latitudes: My Life in the Peace Corps and Beyond, was recognized by the Arizona Literary Association for Non-Fiction and, according to the Midwest Review, “…is more than just another travel memoir. It is an engaged and engaging story of one man’s physical and spiritual journey of self-discovery…”
Several of his articles have been published in Ragazine and WorldView Magazines, Literary Yard, Literary Travelers and Quail BELL. His column in the “Arizona Authors Association” newsletter, is entitled, “The Million Mile Walker Review: What We’re Reading and Why.” One essay was a winner in the Arizona Authors Association literary competition 2020 and one of his “The Yin & Yang of Travel” articles was recognized in the 2020 Solas Literary awards for Best Travel Writing.
His honors include the "Service Above Self" award from Rotary International. He’s the membership chair for “Partnering for Peace” and a board member of “Advance Guatemala. His wife and three children were born in Guatemala. You can learn more at www.MillionMileWalker.com and follow him on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/millionmilew... and www.Guatemalastory.net
May 14, 2020
Two stars because there were some good sections of nature/adventure passages. Otherwise, if you wonder whether you have yet read the most asinine, self-centered piece of travel literature written by a middle aged man and his best friend who both want to act like adventurous 15 year olds, well, this just might qualify. The author and his best friend since childhood, Mike, recruit two other acquaintances for an epic kayak trip on the Niger River. Before the trip even begins, the author is backstabbing their two companions. Throughout the trip, The narrator and his bestie behave like a couple of teenagers with an obsession for unnecessary risks and a desire to show how “manly” they are. Both have wives in late pregnancy back home and the narrator spends chunks of the book explaining why his “special” relationship with his wife makes this a logical time for a risky trip to a remote region. Local people throughout are props, especially African women who are mainly described in terms of their sex appeal.
May 19, 2008
Amazing. It's kinda cliche, but it's all about the journey, not the destination. Jenkins devoted roughly two pages to the destination , but the entire book about the joyrney. Basically, he decided to lead the team to be the first to run from the headwaters of the Niger all the way to Tibuktu. Crazy rebels, crocodiles, hippos, nasty diseases, and all sorts of stuff stood in their way but they made it though and learned a lot about themselves along the way. As I've written before, I can't get enough of Jenkin's books and this one was spectacular.
April 12, 2010
This is more of an adventure story than a book on the culture of Mali, despite its title. While the author's goal of being the first men ever to kayak the Niger River from source to end is extremely impressive, I had a hard time liking the author himself. I felt like he took some really stupid risks that would only cross the mind of a 20 year male (the problem is, of course, that Jenkins is not that). The writing is very fragmented, and I couldn't figure out why he kept flashbacking to any earlier trip through the Sahara.
Something else that bothered me was that Jenkins often painted Africa as something exotic and sexualized -- the mysterious and dangerous "dark continent". I don't think he intended this, but maybe therein lies the problem.
It's an interesting read -- not a bad book for a plane ride, but if you're looking for a good book about Mali, this isn't it.
Something else that bothered me was that Jenkins often painted Africa as something exotic and sexualized -- the mysterious and dangerous "dark continent". I don't think he intended this, but maybe therein lies the problem.
It's an interesting read -- not a bad book for a plane ride, but if you're looking for a good book about Mali, this isn't it.
February 24, 2020
It is an enjoyable read but as I scratched the surface I realize that there are certain aspects that plagued me.
On the face of it, it seems like an enjoyable adventure, to find the source of the Niger then kayak down it.
However the author seems bored with the river and tires of his travelling companions.
The book becomes less of a travelogue and more of an internal struggle. Its seems as if this is one last fling before fatherhood, during which he tries to recreate his youth.
I wish there was more about the people of the river, instead they are treated with contempt, derision and mistrust.
If you want a book about adventure, this is it. If you want a book about the river Niger or Africa, this is not it.
On the face of it, it seems like an enjoyable adventure, to find the source of the Niger then kayak down it.
However the author seems bored with the river and tires of his travelling companions.
The book becomes less of a travelogue and more of an internal struggle. Its seems as if this is one last fling before fatherhood, during which he tries to recreate his youth.
I wish there was more about the people of the river, instead they are treated with contempt, derision and mistrust.
If you want a book about adventure, this is it. If you want a book about the river Niger or Africa, this is not it.
August 8, 2010
An oddly disjointed book... Jenkins calls this "To Timbuktu", but after a book spent kayaking the Niger, he actually gets to Timbuktu by motorbike, and only for a couple of pages.
In the end, not a bad book about kayaking and about the sensations of travel, but while Jenkins is sympathetic to the Africans he encounters, he has no real grasp of culture or history. He's "going to Timbuktu" only as an excuse to kayak the Niger; the city and its setting are irrelevant.
A bit too much "Outside" hipster-travel macho, but an interesting read, and (yes, a back-handed compliment) very good on river kayaking in scary terrain.
In the end, not a bad book about kayaking and about the sensations of travel, but while Jenkins is sympathetic to the Africans he encounters, he has no real grasp of culture or history. He's "going to Timbuktu" only as an excuse to kayak the Niger; the city and its setting are irrelevant.
A bit too much "Outside" hipster-travel macho, but an interesting read, and (yes, a back-handed compliment) very good on river kayaking in scary terrain.
August 13, 2010
The author had some decent observations about rustic travel in general, but I couldn't help but dislike him. His accounts seemed a little far fetched, his personal judgment was overly reckless and the story's bouncing timeline was often jarring.
February 22, 2024
To Timbuktu is a patchwork memoir, filled with starts, and stops, interludes and detours, written by a lifelong outdoor adventurer, Mark Jenkins, who in his early 20s took off to West Africa to kayak down the Niger River from source to sea with three other buddies from his native Wyoming. I have mixed feelings about this book. On one hand, there is an agility in his writing that brings to life the people and places he encountered on his journey. While I enjoyed these musings, something seemed missing. Something about the author, and his style and interpretations of his experiences made me feel disconnected and unsure of his story.
About 2/3 of the way through the book, he casually tells of an encounter with a prostitute, but does not even mention the fact that in doing so, he cheated on his pregnant newlywed wife. It was extremely dissonant given how much he talked about her pregnancy and the newborn baby they were both waiting to welcome. His lack of self reflection about that decision (and others) made it hard for me to trust anything else he had written. I was also frequently disoriented by his dearth of reference points to time or space—where and when he was. I suppose that’s part of the unfathomable vastness of the continent that carried this adventure for him. Jenkins is a four-star writing talent with a three-star telling. In the end, the anecdotes were nice, but as for the meaning of his trip, I just couldn’t relate.
About 2/3 of the way through the book, he casually tells of an encounter with a prostitute, but does not even mention the fact that in doing so, he cheated on his pregnant newlywed wife. It was extremely dissonant given how much he talked about her pregnancy and the newborn baby they were both waiting to welcome. His lack of self reflection about that decision (and others) made it hard for me to trust anything else he had written. I was also frequently disoriented by his dearth of reference points to time or space—where and when he was. I suppose that’s part of the unfathomable vastness of the continent that carried this adventure for him. Jenkins is a four-star writing talent with a three-star telling. In the end, the anecdotes were nice, but as for the meaning of his trip, I just couldn’t relate.
January 2, 2022
Just couldn’t do it. After finishing The Badass Librarians of Timbuktu was excited to stay in this region of the world with a book off my shelves but just couldn’t do it. The author comes across as a pompous, entitled white guy who sees the world and its people as his own private playground to exploit as he sees fit. I usually like adventure travel stories but something about this guy and his tone grated me the wrong way. Maybe reading it aloud to my own daughter, who is too young to understand any of it, made me think more about the undertones and exploitation of this type of travel/book. Learned nothing of the land or it’s people other than some snippets from a long dead European’s journal about his ‘discovery’ of the region and far too much about how cool the author and his friend were in high school. Shelved under did not finish. Going in the donate pile.
March 12, 2022
This book comprises several adventures: two expecting dads and their 2 friends kayaking the Niger in Guinea and then the author motorcycling in Mali along with reminiscences of traveling through Morocco and Algeria as 20ish-year-olds. It’s written well, and the interspersed tales of ill-fated European explorers is fascinating.
But the good stories and good writing can’t overcome my distaste for the author’s arrogance, irresponsibility, and disdain for two of his fellow travelers.
Actually what bothered me most was his casual description of stealing from Moroccans as a young guy without a hint of remorse. Later everything is stolen from him (by Moroccans or Algerians, I can’t remember), and he’s angry.
Also irritating was his frequent generalisms about Africa. It didn’t have to be negative, but whenever he said something beginning with “In Africa…” he came off sounding like he was too ignorant to realize how little he knew. (How much can anyone know about an entire continent, let alone someone who hasn’t lived there for any significant portion of his life?)
But the good stories and good writing can’t overcome my distaste for the author’s arrogance, irresponsibility, and disdain for two of his fellow travelers.
Actually what bothered me most was his casual description of stealing from Moroccans as a young guy without a hint of remorse. Later everything is stolen from him (by Moroccans or Algerians, I can’t remember), and he’s angry.
Also irritating was his frequent generalisms about Africa. It didn’t have to be negative, but whenever he said something beginning with “In Africa…” he came off sounding like he was too ignorant to realize how little he knew. (How much can anyone know about an entire continent, let alone someone who hasn’t lived there for any significant portion of his life?)
September 5, 2017
A true adventure story, replete with scary moments and the inevitable contention among participants with different goals. I very much enjoyed the stories of past explorers to the region, which added a heartrending historical prospective to the search for Timbuktu. I admit that I will never understand the psyche of people who make these arduous adventures, especially given the odds of making it out alive.
October 1, 2019
A very good read from one of my favorite authors. Short book really holds your attention although not a page burner. Four guys kayak to the head of the Niger in Africa, then they split up and do seperate adventures. An interesting travel book with some detours into other adventures these young men did, and detours into trips by famous explorers. I am tempted to give it 5 stars.
September 15, 2018
I enjoyed this quite a bit. Have always loved jenkins' writing.
January 16, 2020
Good detail and adventure.
April 20, 2020
I’ve found this book amazing, loved the adventure and the way the writer describes each situation and sceneries. I felt many emotions while reading, super.
July 14, 2020
Terrific, personal narrative writing. Totally absorbing. Good story. Young men (then; in my own generation) have an adventure finding the source of any kayaking the headwaters of the Niger River.
April 24, 2013
When I was younger and the world was larger, I heard Timbuktu (with various spellings) mentioned much more often, generally in the context of the back of beyond, the ends of the earth, a place so far away that you would have to travel into and out of the heart of darkness just to get there. Now, the world is much smaller, there are fewer blank places on the map (not counting a section of New Jersey) and if you want to visit Timbuktu, just go to Google Earth, type in "Timbuktu, Mali," hit "enter," and Bob's your uncle.
In To Timbuktu: A Journey Down the Niger, Mark Jenkins and his three companions (two of whom are there for all the wrong reasons and are lucky to have survived their ignorance)go out of their way to get to the fabled Islamic city the old fashioned way. By kayaking from the headwaters of the Niger to Timbuktu and into the Gulf of Guinea, they travel from the darkness of the unknown into the twilight of legend and on into the light of the modern world, for until their journey the headwaters were unknown (well, the natives knew, but natives worldwide rarely count in the annals of civilization) and no one had ever mad the journey from beginning to end.
Jenkins' account of the preparation, journey and aftermath is brutally honest and candid, with equal portions of foolishness, heroism, terror and naivety. He also includes generous helpings from the accounts of past explorers, from the Greeks and Romans onward. One might think that the river and its dangerous fauna (hippos, crocs, people) might be the greatest perils, but he shows us that bureaucracy can be an even more formidable foe, deceived only by forged travel papers and placated only by bribes, especially in areas where one local warlord is more powerful than the entire country.
Jenkins is a perceptive observer, both of the land through which he travels and the people whom he meets. He documents poverty, injustice and despair with the same sensibility that he uses to record ancient lifestyles, wisdom and joy. While his account often makes the reader glad he is not there with Jenkins, for example when he kayaks through an "impenetrable" wall of river debris after a storm or when Jenkins realizes that being so low in his kayak his butt is in a perfect position to be chomped by a crocodile, we are always glad he is there, telling us what we missed.
In To Timbuktu: A Journey Down the Niger, Mark Jenkins and his three companions (two of whom are there for all the wrong reasons and are lucky to have survived their ignorance)go out of their way to get to the fabled Islamic city the old fashioned way. By kayaking from the headwaters of the Niger to Timbuktu and into the Gulf of Guinea, they travel from the darkness of the unknown into the twilight of legend and on into the light of the modern world, for until their journey the headwaters were unknown (well, the natives knew, but natives worldwide rarely count in the annals of civilization) and no one had ever mad the journey from beginning to end.
Jenkins' account of the preparation, journey and aftermath is brutally honest and candid, with equal portions of foolishness, heroism, terror and naivety. He also includes generous helpings from the accounts of past explorers, from the Greeks and Romans onward. One might think that the river and its dangerous fauna (hippos, crocs, people) might be the greatest perils, but he shows us that bureaucracy can be an even more formidable foe, deceived only by forged travel papers and placated only by bribes, especially in areas where one local warlord is more powerful than the entire country.
Jenkins is a perceptive observer, both of the land through which he travels and the people whom he meets. He documents poverty, injustice and despair with the same sensibility that he uses to record ancient lifestyles, wisdom and joy. While his account often makes the reader glad he is not there with Jenkins, for example when he kayaks through an "impenetrable" wall of river debris after a storm or when Jenkins realizes that being so low in his kayak his butt is in a perfect position to be chomped by a crocodile, we are always glad he is there, telling us what we missed.
September 2, 2016
_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.
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.
February 6, 2014
There are some real great moments in this book that makes me crave the kind of whole hearted adventure that Mark is known for. There's a paragraph in the book that describes the youthful adventurer which I found revealing and also slightly disheartening. Wondering whether I am no longer able to travel freely and spontaneously as I once did in my youth.
"It was January 1977. Mike and I were both 18. Of course we didn't know it then, but there are only certain times in your life when you can do certain things. If you don't do them at that very moment, they pass you by forever and you and your life become something else. Lighting out to see the world is one of those things. If you are too young, you will be hurt by the malformed people who prey on innocents, and never again feel safe or trust humans. If you are too old, the seeds of cynicism and fearfulness have already taken root and you shall be a loathsome traveler. You must be young enough to believe in your own immortality in a mysterious, ineluctable way, but old enough to understand that you could die if you get too messed up."
"It was January 1977. Mike and I were both 18. Of course we didn't know it then, but there are only certain times in your life when you can do certain things. If you don't do them at that very moment, they pass you by forever and you and your life become something else. Lighting out to see the world is one of those things. If you are too young, you will be hurt by the malformed people who prey on innocents, and never again feel safe or trust humans. If you are too old, the seeds of cynicism and fearfulness have already taken root and you shall be a loathsome traveler. You must be young enough to believe in your own immortality in a mysterious, ineluctable way, but old enough to understand that you could die if you get too messed up."
December 22, 2010
Mark Jenkins has written several books about traveling in unconventional ways to unconventional places around the world. I enjoy his writing. To Timbuktu is part his own journey but also brief stories of adventurers through the ages who tried to find the source of the Niger River and to get to Timbuktu. He also relives his travel adventures as a crazy 18 year old in Europe and Africa, traveling with the same companion with whom is now going by kayak down the Niger River. At 18 they were totally free to do what they wanted and had no money. At around 30 they both have pregnant wives at wives at home and although there is a lot of the crazy teenager left in these guys, there is now something else - maturity maybe - as well(thank goodness.)
In many ways I think the book is Mark's tribute to his life long friend Mike who died on an adventure trip in the arctic.
In many ways I think the book is Mark's tribute to his life long friend Mike who died on an adventure trip in the arctic.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
September 14, 2012
This book has been on my "to read" list for many years. I'm so glad I finally got to it. It is the story of one adventurous man in his 20's who has traveled the world the hard way: walking, climbing, kayaking, by boat, motorcycle, bicycle, and on foot. This time he and 3 boyhood friends from Wyoming travel to the source of the Niger in Sierra Leone during war and tribal conflict. They kayak through sieves of vines and fallen trees, shot waterfalls, bribe every guide and chief, fight the worry of disease, insects, crocs, hippos, and hunger. Finally, the group splits when the Niger is over a mile wide. The author continues on to Timbuktu (a disappointment), then home to a pregnant wife. Part of the book reads like poetry, part like journal. I moves along quickly. It is the first book in a long time that I wanted to reread immediately.
July 17, 2012
As someone who travels, I found this to be one of the best books I've read in a while. I could picture the places described in vibrant color, almost smelling the same air. Sure, the author took risks. Sure some were a bit much. But, without risk there is not reward. Clearly he's telling a story of the things he had done and lived through. No one wants to read a story about the things one thinks of doing and never does because they're too risky!
If you've ever wanted to travel, to really travel, not just take a tour, read this book to get an idea of what it's really like to meet the people along the way.
If you've ever wanted to travel, to really travel, not just take a tour, read this book to get an idea of what it's really like to meet the people along the way.
April 17, 2012
just finished reading this excellent travel account of a man and his friends' explorations of the dark continent. After many years have passed, they again return to reclaim the original goal of reaching the unreachable: Timbuktu. What he learns along his journey is that it is not only the destination that matters but what is attained along the way... excellent read!
November 5, 2012
I enjoyed this book, but it was really more about an "internal" journey in the sense of the author getting to know himself better, than a journey to Africa and exploring the culture and environment of the place. For example, the author has interludes about early explorers who tried to reach Timbuktu, but nothing about the history or culture.
August 13, 2013
Well written and and interesting read. I like the way the author incorporated some historical information about travelers down the Niger River, as well as an account of their own adventure. I want to read more of his books. I heard Mark Jenkens interview on an NPR show recently. He is a fascinating gentleman.
November 19, 2008
I finally finished this book, My turn came up from the Library with The Host, and Inkdeath, so I had to put it on hold twice. It was a great story of friends traveling in Africa on the Niger and going to Timbuktu. Also so great history of previous attempts lead by explorers of old.
March 27, 2010
Mark Jenkins is a youngish writer who includes just interesting insights of where he travels. Mark worked for Outside Mag where he went on an adv per month so he is a busy guy with fascinating stories. He is a good writer.
December 29, 2012
Very little of the book is actually about Timbuktu, or Africa for that matter. It's an adventure story, plan and simple, but the author respects the countrymen so much which is so often lacking in these types of books. I'll read this a few more times, no doubt.
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