num_pages: 336
description: With plenty of sunscreen and a cold beer swaddled in his sleeping bag writer and botanist Jim Malusa bicycled alone to the lowest point on each of six continents a six-year series of anti-expeditions to the anti-summits. His journeys took him to Lake Eyre in the arid heart of Australia along Moses route to the Dead Sea and from Moscow to the Caspian Sea. He pedaled across the Andes to Patagonia around tiny Djibouti in the Horn of Africa and from Tucson to Death Valley. With a scientists eye he vividly observes local landscapes and creatures. As a lone man he is overfed by grandmothers courted by ladies of the night in Volgograd invited into a mosque by Africas most feared tribe chased by sandstorms and hurricanes  yet Malusa keeps riding. His reward: the deep silence of the worlds great depressions. A large-hearted narrative of what happens when a friendly perceptive American puts himself at the mercy of strange landscapes and their denizens Into Thick Air presents one of the most talented new voices in contemporary travel writing.
language: English
title: Into Thick Air: Biking to the Bellybutton of Six Continents
publisher: Counterpoint LLC