The Life of My ChoiceWilfred Thesiger is the last of the great British eccentric explorers, a legendary figure, renowned for his travels through some of the most inaccessible places on earth. As a child in Abyssinia he watched the victorious armies of Ras Tafari returning from hand-to-hand battle, their prisoners in chains; at the age of twenty-three he made his first expedition into the country of the Danakil, a murderous race among whom a man's status in the tribe depended on the number of men he had killed and castrated. His widely acclaimed books, 'Arabian Sands' and 'The Marsh Arabs' tell of his two famous sojourns in the Empty Quarter and the Marshes of southern Iraq. But Thesiger's true character and motives have until now remained an enigma. In this, his autobiography, he highlights the people who most profoundly influenced him and the events which enabled him to lead the life of his choice. "One of the very few people who in our time could be put on the pedestal of the great explorers of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries." "A treasure galleon built to the same specifications as 'Arabian Sands' and 'The Marsh Arabs' ... it is the record of a man magnificently and unabashedly out of step with his times." "He is, unquestionably, one of the greatest travellers the British have ever produced, the last of our recognizable primitives. He also writes with much distinction and honesty." |
From inside the book
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... Wadi Hawar and camped . The wadi was a half a mile across and well wooded . We turned the hungry camels loose to feed and that evening sat round a blazing fire . I was astonished to come across such a place in this stark desert . Three ...
... Wadi Hawar again . All that after- noon he had peered about , asking if we saw any trees . However , starting again four hours before dawn , we reached the wadi at first light . I realized we could easily have crossed it unawares in the ...
... Wadi Hawar had been in flood for weeks . The day after we arrived there Idris and I followed the exceptionally large pug marks of two lion that had killed a horse during the night , until we found they had swum sixty yards across the wadi ...
Contents
List of Maps | 7 |
Introduction | 15 |
Arrival in Addis Ababa | 23 |
Copyright | |
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