Desert Places

In 1992 Robyn Davidson traveled through a year's migration cycle with the Rabari, pastoral nomads of northwest India. Displaying a writer's acute eye for detail and a traveler's keen appreciation for the beauty to be found in the earth's most desolate landscapes, Davidson explores her own desert places even as she immortalizes a culture about to die. Color photo insert.

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In 1992 Robyn Davidson traveled through a year's migratory cycle with the Rabari, pastoral nomads of northwest India, whose grazing lands and trading and pilgrimage routes are quickly being destroyed by new political boundaries, atomic test sites, and irrigation. Sleeping among five thousand sheep and surviving on goat's milk, flatbread, and parasite-infested water in a landscape of misery and haunting loveliness, she endured exhaustion, malnutrition and disease. But she gained an understanding and the trust of a fiercely courageous people with a disappearing way of life.Displaying a writer's acute eye for detail and a traveler's keen appreciation for the beauty to be found in the earth's most desolate landscapes, Davidson explores with ruthless honesty her own desert places even as she immortalizes these "keepers of the way" and a culture about to die. Fans of Bruce Chatwin, Peter Mathiessen, and Mary Morris will find themselves enthralled by the passion and beauty of this account by a woman traveler who "may be one of the great adventurers of our time" (The Boston Globe).