What Does It Take to Follow Your Dream? Find out in Dead Men Don't Leave Tips: Adventures X Africa, a New African Adventure Travel Book by Brandon Wilson

Introducing Dead Men Don't Leave Tips: Adventures X Africa, a new African adventure book from by Brandon Wilson. Dead Men Don't Leave Tips is an edge-of-your-seat true tale about a couple’s seven month, 10,000-mile “dream” safari–overland across Africa from top-to-tip. Against their better judgment, two confirmed independent travelers join a bewildering band of companions and clueless guides on an overland trip from England to Cape Town. After their dream of crossing Africa becomes a nightmare, they set off across the continent alone. And that makes all the difference.

(PRWEB) November 8, 2005 -- What Does It Take to Follow Your Dream?

(Quite a bit, if your “dream” involves crossing Africa.)

That’s what award-winning author Brandon Wilson and his wife Cheryl discover when they set off on a seven-month, 10,000+ mile overland honeymoon from Morocco to Cape Town. As dedicated independent travelers, they’d already traveled around the world. But was a trans-African odyssey too much for even them?

Who do you “cadeau?” How do you create tantalizing dishes from wriggling grubs? Or avoid having a spear tossed through your camera?

Dead Men Don't Leave Tips: Adventures X Africa (Pilgrim’s Tales, November 2005, $16.95 trade paperback, $26.95 hardcover) is an edge of your seat tale about a couple’s seven month “dream” odyssey – overland across Africa from top-to-tip. With trepidation, they join a do-it-yourself overland safari. Flung into the midst of twenty-one bizarre companions, they’re shocked to discover that the “guides” know Africa as well as the dark side of the moon. After watching their dream slowly turn into a nightmare, they eventually set off across Africa – alone. And that makes all the difference.

Join the adventurous couple as they meet mountain gorillas face to face. Melt down during a blistering Saharan breakdown. Hunt dikdik with Pygmies. Climb Africa’s highest mountain. Feel the raw power of the Serengeti. Hop the “gun-run” through a civil war. Rush down thundering Class V Zambezi rapids and dive into South Africa’s cauldron of turmoil.

Dead Men Don't Leave Tips is a captivating tale filled with a passion for travel, spontaneity and unbridled adventure.

Dead Men Don't Leave Tips is often funny, sometimes anguished, yet always real. Nothing is held back or glossed-over: from the hustle and hassle of the souk to shady dealings in blackmarket alleys, from the frustration of border extortion to the thrill of sandmatting the Sahara eight feet at a time.

Dead Men Don't Leave Tips is written with a keen eye for detail. It takes you onto the crazed roads of Africa, as well as into the lives and hearts of its people.

Wilson takes you along across this vast continent, through the everyday ups and downs, showing once again that the real joy of travel is the moment to moment thrill of getting there.

For a preview visit: http://www.PilgrimsTales.com

Early Reviews

“Brandon Wilson jacks the vehicle of trans-African adventure for a ride so real you breathe the dust and drip the sweat while trundling down off-the-beaten tracks outstanding in the number and quality of their ruts. If adventure drives are a genre, Wilson has created a smarter, more brazen, more sweeping subspecies. This is a masterful crossroads of characters, exotic places, history and human drama in a rig that never stalls..."

~ Richard Bangs, author The Lost River and Mystery of the Nile/adventurer/producer Richard Bangs Adventures

“Dead Men Don’t Leave Tips is an adventure journal only the craziest traveler would take as a guide. But we can dream, can’t we?...I was swept away by the drama and the storytelling… Wilson travels heart-first with both feet solidly on the ground and his curiosity always in high gear. He is exactly the right person to be writing travel books for the rest of us.” ~ Joseph W. Bean, Book Reviewer, Maui Weekly (5 shakas)

"Brandon Wilson's Dead Men Don't Leave Tips is that rare event: a travel book that transcends its genre to become a transformative journey of the soul into a disparate and gorgeously challenging culture, as seen through the eyes of a man determined to experience life as it is, rather than as it's presented to us.

Eschewing the typical tourist African safari, Wilson and his travel companion, along with a host of madcap dysfunctional fellow travelers, embark on a wildly funny, poignant, and at times terrifying, trip across the African continent.

From the rapacious markets of Marrakesh to the stunning breadth of the Sahara and haunting domains of the Masai, Wilson brings to life in lucid prose the smells, sights, and sensations of being a foreigner in a strange land, who yearns for communion with the world he has set out to explore.

This is travel writing at its most sublime, a paean to Africa in all her contradictory beauty, and a tribute to the resiliancy of those who travel beyond boundaries not only in search of meaning, but also of understanding." ~ C.W. Gortner, author of The Secret Lion

"Leaving domesticity, Brandon and his brand new wife Cheryl joined what proved to be the do it yourself safari from hell. From the hot dry hell of the Sahara to the humid hell of the jungle, through starving villages and squalid cities, we follow a picturesque group of "pilgrims." Brandon's writing makes the reader feel the heat, the discomfort and even despair, while giving one laugh after another.

Like all good writing, this book does a lot more than entertain. One would expect to learn about Africa – its people, animals, landscape – from a travel book, but, without lecturing Wilson gets us to see social conditions; the gap between rich and poor, urban and starving. Racially, he is colorblind, with respect for all people, while sometimes justly indignant about cruel or exploitative behavior.

Brandon Wilson is a writer with the eye of an artist, a basic decency and social conscience that in another book made him the champion of the suppressed Tibetan people. He has the humor of a cartoonist and the old fashioned ability to tell a good story. I strongly recommend this one to you." ~ Dr. Bob Rich, award-winning author of thirteen books/editor/counselling psychologist

“Wilson masterfully takes the reader along on a trip across the African continent to meet its people and enjoy its breathtaking beauty in ways few have written. He writes a magical story, indeed, laced with humor and tragedy. Well worth reading, it brings Africa to readers on an intimate level not found elsewhere.” ~ Andrew F. O’Hara, author of The Swan: Tales of the Sacramento Valley/journalist

About the Author

Brandon Wilson is an award-winning writer/photographer and explorer. He’s also a man consumed by wanderlust. A voracious explorer of over ninety countries, he's particularly passionate about inspiring others to discover the world and themselves through long-distance trekking.

It all began with jungle walks in central Africa. They opened his eyes to the deep satisfaction of traveling one-step-at-a-time. “By slowing down,” he believes, "we travel outside – while traveling within.”

Since then, Wilson has become an expert long-distance, light trekker. He has walked four major pilgrimage trails: the Camino de Santiago across Spain (twice), St. Olav’s Way across Norway, and is the first American to complete the 1150-mile Via Francigena from England to Rome. However, the most challenging path was a 650-mile Buddhist trail that he and his wife Cheryl trekked with their horse from Lhasa, Tibet to Kathmandu.

It is the subject of his inspiring book, Yak Butter Blues: A Tibetan Trek of Faith. It is a 2005 Independent Publisher IPPY Award-winner and his photographs have won awards from National Geographic Traveler and Islands magazines. He is a member of The Explorers Club and Artists Without Frontiers.

Simply put, Wilson’s travel philosophy is, “Don't put off following your dreams. There are always excuses and the world is full of naysayers. Chart your own course and do it! No excuses, no regrets.”

Dead Men Don't Leave Tips: Adventures X Africa

by Brandon Wilson

280 pages, Travel Narrative/Adventure/Non-Fiction

38 duo-tone photographs and maps

5.5” x 8.5” • ISBN: 0 - 9770536-4-4 • $16.95 trade paperback

6” x 9” • ISBN: 0-9770536-5-2 • $26.95 hardcover

LCCN: 2005905467

publication date: November 2005; published by Pilgrim’s Tales; distributed by Ingram, Baker & Taylor (US), Gardners, Bertrams (UK)

Available at bookstores, Amazon.com and all major Internet bookstores, and directly from PilgrimsTales.com

For a preview with sample chapter and photos, please visit www.PilgrimsTales.com

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