Bandit Country

Adventures of the old-fashioned kind - dangerous and messy - by an intrepid traveller and tireless chronicler of the real world. There are more and more places on the planet that have slipped out of the geopolitical network of nation - or statehood. Together, these emerging no-man's-lands constitute a new Terra Incognita: a vast zone of unexplored ways of life, natural wonders, and grave dangers. Schultheis finds himself in such dangerous and fascinating places as Pakistan's NWFP - the country of the warlike Pathans, the world's most numerous tribal people. Travelling through the Khyber Pass, where smuggling czars have boasted that "no Kaffir has ever spent the night and lived," the author does make it through to the morning - with a dozen armed Afghan bodyguards. He also travels to the southern Sudan - where rebel armies of the Christian and animist Dinka, Nuer, and other semi-nomadic tribes fight for independence from the slave-trading Arab central government in Khartoum.
These travels, along with journeys to Dagestan, Kosovo, and the American Southwest, are stories told with a wry, ironic sense of humour that should captivate anyone who loves adventure tales, history, geography, or the exotic side of world politics.