num_pages: 256
description: Nina Sovich had always yearned for adventures in faraway places; she imagined herself leading the life of a solitary traveler. Yet at the age of thirty-four she found herself married and contemplating motherhood. Catching her reflection in a window spotted with Paris rain she no longer saw the fearless woman who spent her youth travelling in Cairo Lahore and the West Bank staring back at her. Unwittingly she had followed lifes script and now she needed to cast it out.Inspired by female explorers like Mary Kingsley who explored Gabons jungle in the 1890s and Karen Blixen who ran a farm in Kenya during World War I Sovich packed her bags and hopped on the next plane to Africa in search of adventure.To the Moon and Timbuktu takes readers on a fast-paced trek through Western Sahara Mali Mauritania and Niger bringing their textures and flavors into vivid relief. On Sovichs travels she encounters rough-and-tumble Chinese sailors a Venezuelan doctor working himself to death in Chinguetti indifferent French pensioners RVing along the coast and a close-knit circle of Nigerien women who adopt her into their fold showing her the promise of Africas future.
language: English
title: To the Moon and Timbuktu: A Trek Through the Heart of Africa
publisher: New Harvest