Along the Inca Road: A Woman's Journey Into an Ancient Empire

by Karin Muller

Book Overview

A woman's journey along the ancient Inca Road follows the high-altitude spine of an empire across the Andes from Ecuador to Brazil, where she documents the descendents of the Inca with words and... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 079227685X
• ISBN13: 9780792276852
• Release Date: September 2000
• Publisher: National Geographic Society
• Length: 304 Pages
• Weight: 1.58 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.5" x 6.0" x 9.0"

Customer Reviews

You won't be able to put it down

Along The Inca Road is a fresh and exciting experiential travel documentary written by a woman who follows a route of the ancient Inca Road from Quito, Ecuador to Santiago, Chile, along the mountains and coast of western South America. Her experiences are immediate, vivid, demanding and colorful. She clearly enjoys the challenge of dipping into and sampling all aspects of local culture. We are with her as she learns to pilot a caballero (reed boat) on the coast of Peru, carries the feast table of Mama Negra in Lacta Cunga, and climbs endless roads and trails to meet the people. Along The Inca Road is a book about the author's experiences with the people as much as about geography and history. After many hair-raising, sometimes hilarious, always challenging and intriguing experiences, she sums it up with the following:"I had once thought that I was embarking on a 'hero's journey' - an odyssey into the unknown, filled with obstacles, success and failure, and newfound knowledge. And so it had been - only I wasn't the hero of this story. I was just the chronicler. The true heroes were the people I met along the way... They had all stopped for a while to lend me a hand. What I learned from them would carry me through the weeks to come. As long as their memories stayed with me, this journey would never really end (p. 294-295)."And even more succinctly, she remarks: "The history books have it all wrong. The Inca Empire was never really conquered. It's alive and well (p.294)." To participate vicariously in her fresh experiences, read this bright travelogue. You won't be able to put it down.Nancy Lorraine, Reviewer

facinating

I've always been facinated by the Incas. This book only whetted my appetite further and now I'm reading everything I can about them. This book is full of Karin Muller's adventures while travelling the Inca road and has plenty of Incan history, too.

Tells of a woman's journey on the Inca Road

This armchair adventure story tells of a woman's journey on the Inca Road - a 3,124-mile odyssey across four countries in search of the peoples and history of the region. Stories blend Inca history with observations of contemporary peoples, providing a first-person 'you are there' feel.

Magnificent!

Compelling, entertaining, historical... this book is a real page-turner. Muller's keenly-observed journey skillfully interweaves past and present, giving the reader a glimpse of what life must have been like in the golden heyday of the Inca empire as she walks along stones and walkways trodden by warriors and peasants for hundreds of years. She writes with compassion and genuine understanding of those she meets along the way - peopling her book with characters who come to life and leap off the page. Along the Inca Road transports the reader into a world most of us will never see - probably for the best, since the road is long and arduous. I'm glad I didn't have to do it - but I'm even more glad that she did!