The Places in Between by Rory Stewart

... a striding, glorious book. But it's more than great journalism. It's a great travel narrative. Learned but gentle, tough but humane, Stewart — a Scottish journalist who has served in both the British Army and the Foreign Office — seems hewn from 19th-century DNA, yet he's also blessed with a 21st-century motherboard. He writes with a mystic's appreciation of the natural world, a novelist's sense of character and a comedian's sense of timing.

Spending an entire Saturday babysitting can lead to multiple blog posts as a way to ward off boredom ... I'm sorry.

Babysitting has been something I've suffered since I was old enough to be put out for hire amongst the young families in my childhood neighbourhood and it seems I am doomed to have suburbia follow me as I travel through life ...

Anyway, an interesting book, she writes, wishing to ward off misery with the instantaneous arrival of both the documentary movie I blogged about a few posts down and this book. I could curl up for the day, losing myself in them ... did I mention the housework that's demanding attention.

Photographer to huisvrouw in the blink of an unwilling eye ...

The book is titled The Places in Between and it's written by Rory Stewart.

Tom Bissell reviews it for the New York Times saying, Paul Theroux once described a certain kind of travel book as having mainly "human sacrifice" allure, and how close Stewart comes to being killed on his journey won't be disclosed here. He is, however, sternly warned before he begins his walk. "You are the first tourist in Afghanistan," observes an Afghan from the country's recently resurrected Security Service. "It is mid-winter," he adds. "There are three meters of snow on the high passes, there are wolves, and this is a war. You will die, I can guarantee." For perhaps the first time in the history of travel writing, a secret-police goon emerges as the voice of sobriety and reason.

I smiled over over the final paragraph ... Open land undefiled by sheep droppings has most likely been mined. If you're taking your donkey to high altitudes, slice open its nostrils to allow greater oxygen flow. Don't carry detailed maps, since they tend to suggest 007 affinities. If, finally, you're determined to do something as recklessly stupid as walk across a war zone, your surest bet to quash all the inevitable criticism is to write a flat-out masterpiece. Stewart did. Stewart has. "The Places in Between" is, in very nearly every sense, too good to be true.