Description

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In the early 1980s, John Pakenham walked a total of 1,500 miles, with a series of companions from the local Turkana and Samburu tribes and their long-suffering donkeys, around a lake in the Great Rift Valley of northern Kenya. Repeatedly beset by extreme thirst and dehydration, bitterly cold torrential rains, poisonous spiders, vindictive mosquitoes and the ever-present threat of bandits, not to mention a fatal fight between two of his companions, he was lucky to live to tell his tale. Pakenham's account provides a rare glimpse of a tough terrain and its even tougher inhabitants, where every day was a battle for survival. This is extreme travel that, four decades on, still packs a powerful punch.

About the Author

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John Pakenham worked in theater and then in the film industry as a special effects technician, including on The Empire Strikes Back. Fascinated by the journeys of past adventurers, he befriended the last of the old-school explorers, Wilfred Thesiger, who encouraged him, between movies, to travel without modern comforts, using only map and compass, donkeys and camels. That created the foundation for the treks described in Walks on the Wild Side.