New African Adventure Book Exposes the Joys and Frustrations of Safari Travel -- Dead Men Don't Leave Tips: Adventures X Africa
Ever thought that you’d like to set-off across Africa and explore its exotic beauty for yourself? Ever wonder what traveling with those overland safaris can really be like? Well, the new, edge-of-your seat Africa adventure travel book Dead Men Don’t Leave Tips: Adventures X Africa by award-winning author Brandon Wilson provides an authentic, first-hand look at the safari experience by someone who has traveled in those “shoes.”
Paia, HI (PRWEB) February 28, 2006 -- Ever thought that you’d like to set-off across Africa and explore its exotic beauty for yourself? Ever wonder what traveling with those overland safaris can really be like?
Well, the new, edge-of-your seat Africa adventure travel book Dead Men Don’t Leave Tips: Adventures X Africa by award-winning author Brandon Wilson provides an authentic, first-hand look at the safari experience by someone who has traveled in those “shoes.”
As the story opens, the author and his wife Cheryl, tired of a predictable life in suburbia, consider joining a seven-month, do-it-yourself “dream” safari for their honeymoon from Morocco to Cape Town, South Africa. Although they’d already traveled around the world on their own, they initially believe that traveling the length of Africa might prove too formidable – even for them.
Hesitantly, they join a do-it-yourself overland safari. Flung into the midst of twenty-one bizarre, young companions, they’re shocked to discover that many have never even camped before. Their equally inexperienced “guides” know Africa as well as the dark side of the moon. Finally, after their truck breaks down in the midst of the sweltering Sahara for ten long days, (with no replacement parts in sight), they figure that they’re better off on their own.
So, they eventually do what any other adventurous, slightly insane couple might do -- they set off across Africa -- alone.
Dead Men Don’t Leave Tips takes readers across Africa as these "everyman" travelers photo-stalk mountain gorillas, hunt with Pygmies, climb Mt. Kilimanjaro, explore the Serengeti, hop a "gun-run" through Mozambique's civil war, raft Zambezi Class V rapids and arrive in South Africa as Soweto erupts into violence.
This is a humorous, sometimes anguished and brutally real account. Richard Bangs, producer of Richard Bangs ADVENTURES/author Mystery of the Nile says, “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.” He calls it, “a masterful crossroads of characters, exotic places, history and human drama in a rig that never stalls, and allows the devil to drive his own ill-behaved backyard.”
Nothing is painted in the typical writer's wide brush extolling one beautiful sunset or another glorious setting. This book exposes the humor and frustration of crossing a land where the rules change daily: from the hustle and hassle of the souk to shady dealings in black market alleys; from the frustration of border extortion to the thrill of sandmatting across the Sahara eight feet at a time.
Once removed from the stifling chrysalis of the “pampered overland elite” the couple begins to experience the real Africa. And that makes all the difference. C.W. Gortner, author of The Secret Lion calls it, “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. 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 resiliency of those who travel beyond boundaries not only in search of meaning, but also of understanding.”
Dead Men Don’t Leave Tips leads readers through the ups and downs of independent travel in a land still little-known by Western audiences. On the other hand, it also lends a human face to the continent that is vastly different from the one portrayed in the news. It takes readers onto the crazed roads of African adventure and into the hearts of its people-while transforming the predictable “travelogue” into a raw, penetrating, more poignant genre.
Dr. Bob Rich, award-winning author of thirteen books, summed it up when he observed, “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 Brandon 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. He’s 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.”
About the author:
Wilson is an award-winning author/photographer. A voracious explorer of over ninety countries, he's passionate about inspiring others to discover the world and themselves through long-distance trekking. He has walked four major long-distance pilgrimage trails. 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 critically acclaimed book, Yak Butter Blues: A Tibetan Trek of Faith, a 2005 Independent Publisher IPPY Award-winner. His photographs have won awards from National Geographic Traveler and Islands magazines and he is a member of The Explorers Club.
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.”
About the book:
Dead Men Don't Leave Tips: Adventures X Africa by Brandon Wilson, published by Pilgrim’s Tales; Travel Narrative/Adventure/Non-Fiction • ISBN: 0977053644; ISBN: 0977053652; 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, please visit www.PilgrimsTales.com
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