Travel to Papua New Guinea

Four Corners: A Journey into the Heart of Papua New Guinea

Format: Paperback
Author: Kira Salak
ReleaseDate: 01 November, 2004
Publisher: National Geographic
Rating:

BEST travel adventure book I've ever read!
The first chapter is so intense I guarantee you won't be able to put the book down! Without giving away anything from the book (you can read the description on Amazon yourself), I'll tell you this book is exciting from the first page all the way to the last. This is by far the BEST travel adventure book I've ever read. Does this woman have a death wish traveling alone through Papau New Guinea? I've read her other book, "The Cruelest Journey" and that was also incredible. I can't wait until she writes another book! .

YOU MUST READ THIS BEFORE YOU THINK OF READING THIS BOOK !
Although well written, its focus is not just on PNG. I was very disappointed in this book. The author begins her first chapter writing about a life threatening experience she had while traveling in rather unsafe places in Africa. It is hard to believe that her story is true, as it makes her seem very stupid because of the truly foolish risks she takes and "always" manages to survive these horrendous situations with flying colors. Don't get me wrong as I am no wimpy traveller myself but I travel with respect for the people I visit. I am a "guest" in "their" country. I have visited many off the beaten path countries and lived with the local people traveling with only a backpack on my back. I have no problems riding in dusty local transportation vehicles with a chicken or two in the seat next to me. I have even hiked in places Borneo (Kalimantan), where you did not see one person all day. I have been to PNG many, many times and am the lucky recipient of a large Papuan family in Port Morsby that were so kind as to "adopt" me. I love and am addicted to what you could call "adventure travel", but I am a "Traveller and not a Tourist". There is a vast difference between the two. Although I really don't consider the author a tourist in her travels in the book, but she does make, what I would call, inappropriate demands on the indigenous people. Some of her behaviour makes me think of her a bit like "the ugly American" traveller of the 1950's. At times her behaviour seems rude to the indigenous people she has contact with and I got the impression that she made the trip, and possible others, focusing only on finding her self and not on any negative impact she might be making on the peoples in the rural villages she encountered. What REALLY upset and angered me reading the book, is the many foolish and dangerous risks she puts herself in. I feel she may give the impression to male readers that many women travelers are like this.
She gave me the impression that she willingly puts herself in life threatening situations seemingly without thinking it over realistically first. The book starts out interesting but chapter after chapter the situations she falls in become wilder and wilder to the point of being unbelievable. This makes you begin to wonder if her story is real or a dramatized fiction piece. After finishing the book, I ended up feeling angry at her foolishness. I am a well-travelled person, an experienced writer of creative non-fiction and have a very large collection of non-fiction books regarding Melanesian history and its peoples. I have a degree in Socio-Anthropology, but this woman's story really makes me wonder about her rational mind. I would not be surprised that one day she winds up dead somewhere that is if she has really put herself in the kind of situations she presents in the book. Read it only to learn what NOT to do when while visiting indigenous people in developing countries and only if you can get a copy very cheap. I have been a volunteer in quite rural villages, in PNG, that were located beyond the Highlands and I was the only white woman/person there, but if I behaved like this woman did I would not be writing this review now. I am sorry that this is so very long, but in all my extensive readings and studies, regarding PNG this book is very unbelievable. MaryAnn

E-mail me should you want to know of excellent and true books regarding PNG and Melanesia.



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engaging, though very personal


Though she tends to overdramatize situations that are inherently dramatic, preferring internal analysis over showing what's going on around her - and reading her account is much like peeking into a private, intimate diary that we weren't supposed to see - none of this is the point of this book. Kira Salak's engaging and highly readable account of her cross-country trip across one of the remotest and most exotic corners of the world as a 24-year-old shouldn't be read for its stylistic excellence (though keen on maintaining a reader's suspense, Salak's prose is a little average) or its abundance of descriptive detail (there are some good sections, such as her account of meeting a rebel leader and her descriptions of costumes and dancers) but for its fascinating and intense coming-of-age arc. This isn't the glittering literati of a Jan Morris or an Alan Booth or even the academic sensibilities of a Robert Kaplan. This is simply a compelling adventure story with an exotic locale as the backdrop to an intensive examination of self - what "participatory journalism" aspires to, essentially.

This is Salak as frequently-intrusive central character above place as character. Given that the character stubbornly and frequently plunks herself in the most exotic locales for often-dubious reasons (though by the end she claims she's gotten the "exotic to be noticed" thing out of her system), the reader must decide if the place or the character is the more interesting to them - and if they're sold on the character.

In short, it appeals to some, and turns off others -- all depends on what you're looking for in your armchair travel lit. .

Related products:
click image or link for details on these Papua New Guinea travel books.

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	Papua New Guinea Map by ITMB (Travel Reference Map)
	Under the Mountain Wall: A Chronicle of Two Seasons in Stone Age New Guinea