Today Patagonia is made up of the southern parts of Chile and Argentina, but it's still a land of lonely plains, craggy peaks and wild weather. Someone once said that Patagonia without wind would be like Hell without the Devil. When John Pilkington, one of England's greatest tellers of traveller's tales, spent eight months journeying through Patagonia, he found that being a Patagonian is more a matter of how you feel than where you live. Patagonians are resolute dreamers - immigrants who've thrown their fate to the wind. They hate towns with their petty jealousies and rivalries; given an opportunity, they always go for the unknown. Picking his way through Patagonia's half a million square miles, he unearthed stories of explorers and pioneers, of rustlers and outlaws, such a Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, and of earlier travelers, such as Charles Darwin and Bruce Chatwin.
Still more revealing were his own encounters: for instance with Welsh villagers singing hymns around the harmonium; refugees from Nazi Germany; Scottish evangelists awaiting Armageddon; hippy exiles; prosperous young supporters of ex-president Pinochet; and an Argentine lynch-mob who have him in mind as their victim! He examines what it is that attracts people to such a desolate land - and reflects, too, on the ethics of travel writing.
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Höhe: 241 mm
Breite: 163 mm
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ISBN-13
978-0-7126-3582-0 (9780712635820)
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Schweitzer Klassifikation
John Pilkington has spent much of his life travelling to faraway places. In 1982, after journeys in Africa and Latin America, he set off for Nepal. The story of his 500-mile walk across the western Nepal Himalaya was told in Into Thin Air, 1985. His interest in Asia grew further with the opening in 1986 of the border between China and Pakistan. This made it possible - for the first time for forty years - to retrace virtually the whole length of the Silk Road. His book about the journey, An Adventure on the Old Silk Road, was published by Century in 1989. In the last two years he has written for The Sunday Times, the Sunday Correspondent and Geographical Magazine, and has contributed to several radio and television programmes. His radio programme about Patagonia, entitled The Uttermost Part of the Earth, was broadcast by the BBC's World Service in 1991. In between foreign trips he writes, draws, cycles, walks and promotes the work of Intermediate Technology, a charity to which he has donated many of the proceeds from his books.
