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3.86 AVERAGE
3.86 AVERAGE
adventurous
inspiring
fast-paced
Spoke to my lust for adventure and danger. The promise of not knowing what is coming next and surprise around every corner. I resonate with this lifestyle and love how she captures it. l Lots of knowledge and explanation in the book. Cool to learn about the countries and characters along the way. Inspiring for my own bike trip along the Cabot Trail and future adventures!
informative
inspiring
reflective
slow-paced
adventurous
reflective
medium-paced
adventurous
informative
reflective
medium-paced
adventurous
medium-paced
adventurous
inspiring
reflective
slow-paced
adventurous
emotional
inspiring
medium-paced
In my standard, but also world's laziest (and most difficult to revisit) method of capturing quotes from books, I took so many photos of pages of this read. So many lines captured how I feel about travel & adventure and life, and so many words inspired me. Here's one simple example from pave 137 in this paperback edition:
"We long our whole lives for things we've never known, places we've never been, abstractions that come alive to us in unexpected ways...Perhaps the great task of modern explorers is not to conquer but to connect, to reveal how any given thing leads to another."
and one more, from page 77:
"Beyond avenging my childhood ideas of explorers, and figuring out how to be one myself, I wanted to bike the Silk Road as a practical extension of my thesis at Oxford: to study how borders make and break what is wild in the world, from mountain ranges to people's minds, and how science, or more specifically wilderness conservation, might bridge those divides. So there I was, rich in unemployable university degrees, poor in cash, with few possessions to my name beside a tent, a bicycle, and some books. I felt great about my life decisions, until I felt terrified."
"We long our whole lives for things we've never known, places we've never been, abstractions that come alive to us in unexpected ways...Perhaps the great task of modern explorers is not to conquer but to connect, to reveal how any given thing leads to another."
and one more, from page 77:
"Beyond avenging my childhood ideas of explorers, and figuring out how to be one myself, I wanted to bike the Silk Road as a practical extension of my thesis at Oxford: to study how borders make and break what is wild in the world, from mountain ranges to people's minds, and how science, or more specifically wilderness conservation, might bridge those divides. So there I was, rich in unemployable university degrees, poor in cash, with few possessions to my name beside a tent, a bicycle, and some books. I felt great about my life decisions, until I felt terrified."
adventurous
funny
informative
reflective
medium-paced
Overall I enjoyed this. Some great quotes. I do wish she had written some commentary on all of these explorers and how they were exploitative of the places they were exploring. If she had done this I probably would rate this 4 stars. Also her lack of recognition that it is the Chinese government that has issues not all Chinese people. When a women she met while traveling said this, the author said this was the woman “refusing to take sides,” which is an odd way of looking at it. Citizens don’t always reflect their government, especially in a place like China. But I think she accurately portrayed the pain and suffering of recreating outdoors combined with the pure joy. Her descriptions of all the people she’s met were great too, both funny and apt.
adventurous
funny
informative
medium-paced
