An intrepid traveller’s tales from the days when Terra Incognita still existed make thrilling and terrifying reading
It’s an axiom of travel writing that, if n represents the discomfort endured by the writer, 10n represents the pleasure enjoyed by the reader. Look at the perennial appetite for the stories of Scott and Shackleton, who battled unimaginably hostile conditions in their searches for the South Pole. Not for nothing did Apsley Cherry-Garrard, a member of Scott’s expedition, call his book The Worst Journey in the World. In 93 years, it has never been out of print.
Sven Hedin, a Swedish explorer born in 1865, is not nearly so well known. But his sufferings were just as acute, and his memoir, My Life as an Explorer, is a fascinating period piece as well as a nail-biting read. Hedin lived in an age when maps really did have big blank spaces: that magical label, Terra Incognita. Having witnessed as a child the triumphant return of a North Pole explorer, he decided it was his vocation to fill in some of those spaces. And so begins his great story, as he sets off towards the uncharted desert from … Trans-Caspia.
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