Kingdoms in the Air

April 1, 2016
Reflections on a wild life of daring travel. Award-winning fiction writer and journalist Shacochis (The Woman Who Lost Her Soul, 2013, etc.), a contributing editor for Outside, was infected with wanderlust even as a boy growing up in the Washington, D.C., suburbs. His "disease of waywardness," his mother told him, "had the potential" to land him "in serious trouble." As his witty, irreverent travel essays demonstrate, it was not only his love of travel, but often his complete lack of preparation that threatened to cause trouble. In the far east of Russia, for example, he armed himself with pepper spray as protection against bears. "You have pepper spray?" a Russian asked him. "What for? To make bear cry before he absolutely eat you?" On his 39th birthday, Shacochis decided it was time for his "nicotine-fouled, under-exercised" body to scale 16,943-foot Mount Ararat. In all ways, he writes, "I was either uninformed or ignorant, and considered both states to be the mother of adventure." With no experience fishing, he gave in to his obsession with the South American dorado, his "dream fish." In his 20s, he met a couple who had renounced "convention and orthodoxy" to invent a ruggedly adventuresome life for themselves. Despite challenges and discomfort, he learned from them "that there's never a good reason to make your world small." In the long title essay, the author recounts in palpable detail his travels to Nepal in 2001 with his friend, photographer Tom Laird, who first visited that country in 1972 and "fell under the spell of the mountains and the culture." Nearly 20 years later, Laird gained permission to document life and art in Mustang, a place of "melodramatic romanticism," shrouded in mystery. Shacochis details Nepal's tumultuous political past, vividly renders the landscape's "luminous presence" and "physical sacredness," and sensitively portrays Laird's passions. "Sink into an otherness," the author advises in this enlightening travel collection, for a voyage of self-discovery.

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Starred review from May 15, 2016
In the afterword, National Book Awardwinner Shacochis (The Woman Who Lost Her Soul, 2013) urges travelers to test comfort zones, as if that impulse was avoidable while reading this exuberant travel and cultural anthology. Destination becomes irrelevant as Shacochis brings each setting to life with a perceptive eye, an edgy devotion to fresh language, and mastery at capturing group interaction. He often wrestles with a dilemma faced by many living in poor, touristy regionshow to balance development while preserving character. A hidden Himalayan kingdom allows some visitors, then becomes overrun. A sleepy Caribbean island sprouts resorts and casinos. Russian thugs control entire rivers, poaching caviar and leaving piles of dead salmon. Mexican villagers earn more money and watch more TV yet long for the simpler lives they led before a resort usurped their beaches. Cuba embraces glitzy tourism to finance the communist revolution. Conservation-minded readers may balk when Shacochis plows through natural habitats on a tank-like ATV, an Amazonian power boat, or low-flying helicopters. But his unflinching treatment of many Third World predicaments will engage every reader. Shacochis lauds people with little money who claw their way to adventure, and his diverse, vibrant essays, brimming with initiative, may inspire some to seek the unique rewards of unstructured travel.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2016, American Library Association.)