Desert Places

by RobynDavidson (Author)

• Used

  Paperback
  1997

  $5.44

  In 1992 Robyn Davidson traveled through a year's migratory cycle with the Rabari, pastoral nomads of northwest India, whose grazing lands and trading and pilgrimage routes are quickly being destroyed by new political boundaries, atomic test sites, and irrigation. Sleeping among five thousand sheep and surviving on goat's milk, flatbread, and parasite-infested water in a landscape of misery and haunting loveliness, she endured exhaustion, malnutrition and disease. But she gained an understanding and the trust of a fiercely courageous people with a disappearing way of life.Displaying a writer's acute eye for detail and a traveler's keen appreciation for the beauty to be found in the earth's most desolate landscapes, Davidson explores with ruthless honesty her own desert places even as she immortalizes these keepers of the way and a culture about to die. Fans of Bruce Chatwin, Peter Mathiessen, and Mary Morris will find themselves enthralled by the passion and beauty of this account by a woman traveler who may be one of the great adventurers of our time (The Boston Globe).

• Used

  Hardcover
  1996

  $4.63

  The Rebari are a nomadic tribe in India's Thar Desert. Like nomads everywhere, the Rebari are being forced into accepting a more sedentary life. Their traditional trading and pilgrimage routes have been transected by borders and canals or blocked by atomic bomb testing sites and irrigated farm lands. But once a year, they arrive in Pushkar, partly as a pilgrimmage to bathe in the most sacred lake in India, partly to buy and sell their animals, partly to enjoy the biggest annual fair in Asia. Robyn Davidson crossed the pathless Thar Desert with the Rebari. Interwoven with the journey of the Rebari is the story of Minu, a highly spirited upperclass Indian woman, forced into an arranged marriage with the ex-king of Ghanerao, locked up in the women's quarters of the palace and subject both to the strict laws of Purdah and to psychological warfare with her in-laws.