“Lands of Lost Borders carried me up into a state of openness and excitement I haven’t felt for years. It’s a modern classic.”—Pico IyerA brilliant, fierce writer, and winner of the 2019 RBC Taylor Prize, makes her debut with this enthralling travelogue and memoir of her journey by bicycle along the Silk Road—an illuminating and thought-provoking fusion of The Places in Between, Lab Girl, and Wild thought-provoking fusion of The Places in Between, Lab Girl, and Wild that dares us to challenge the limits we place on ourselves and the natural world.
As a teenager, Kate Harris realized that the career she craved—to be an explorer, equal parts swashbuckler and metaphysician—had gone extinct. From what she could tell of the world from small-town Ontario, the likes of Marco Polo and Magellan had mapped the whole earth; there was nothing left to be discovered. Looking beyond this planet, she decided to become a scientist and go to Mars.
In between studying at Oxford and MIT, Harris set off by bicycle down the fabled Silk Road with her childhood friend Mel. Pedaling mile upon mile in some of the remotest places on earth, she realized that an explorer, in any day and age, is the kind of person who refuses to live between the lines. Forget charting maps, naming peaks: what she yearned for was the feeling of soaring completely out of bounds. The farther she traveled, the closer she came to a world as wild as she felt within.
Lands of Lost Borders, winner of the 2018 Banff Adventure Travel Award and a 2018 Nautilus Award, is the chronicle of Harris’s odyssey and an exploration of the importance of breaking the boundaries we set ourselves; an examination of the stories borders tell, and the restrictions they place on nature and humanity; and a meditation on the existential need to explore—the essential longing to discover what in the universe we are doing here.
Like Rebecca Solnit and Pico Iyer, Kate Harris offers a travel account at once exuberant and reflective, wry and rapturous. Lands of Lost Borders explores the nature of limits and the wildness of the self that can never fully be mapped. Weaving adventure and philosophy with the history of science and exploration, Lands of Lost Borders celebrates our connection as humans to the natural world, and ultimately to each other—a belonging that transcends any fences or stories that may divide us.
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Quite a fascinating journey by bike through the Silk Road of Central Asia undertaken by two young women from rural Canada. Kate Harris, the author, is a bright, unfocused girl who originally wanted to go to Mars, and studied science at Oxford and MIT. The book contains gritty reality and unexpected humor, allowing me to ponder the fierceness and endurance of women travelers. However, this book of exploration is missing the openly queer POV that would have made it a classic—or perhaps turned it into something else entirely.
Unbelievable journey, hard to follow the geography, some references were over my head. Still an amazing travel story.
1.5 stars
At my last book club meeting, when we were trying to decide on our next read, I was fully behind this story. The blurb sounded interesting and I was hoping for a story that would speak to me, the way Cheryl Strayed’s Wild inspired me to want to do more. I’m not at all pleased to admit that I had to force myself to finish this book. I did not enjoy but a few bits and pieces.
Kate Harris’ tale started strong; I was very optimistic after just the first chapter. Things quickly went downhill from there for me, though. The writer came across as entitled to me, although there is nothing in particular that she wrote about her formative years that would make me think that. It wasn’t until the last chapter or two of this book before it became somewhat clear that she did actually care about the people she came across in her travels. In most cases, I felt that they were all just a means to an end. Even her travelling companion, Mel, didn’t seem all that important to her. Ms. Harris came across as a “me, me, me” type of person. Where I admire that she had a goal in mind and wanted to reach that goal, she never acknowledged that the people that helped her along the way with food and/or lodging were taking a HUGE financial hit when they did so. The people on her path live with very little, but are amazingly generous and welcoming. I’m sure it would have upset them if she had refused their hospitality. Yet it seems she never reciprocated their kindness, either financially or with helping in other little ways. Perhaps she did but didn’t write about that, but if that’s the case I feel she left the humanity aspect out of her story.
I don’t feel I got to know the author in any deep way with this book…which is odd for an memoir. I’m sure the reason I find her to be entitled, condescending, and selfish is that she doesn’t let the reader see her real self. What was she thinking while on this journey? She tells about other people, historical figures, that have taken the same journey and written about their travels. She gives bits and pieces of history of some of the areas she passes through, like an old history professor who cannot keep his train of thought going in one direction. It comes across and dry and lacking feeling.
There are very few personal anecdotes about things that happen to her along the way or the people and places she visits. The handful of times the author tells her personal stories (such as in the first chapter) are wonderful, there just aren’t enough of these gems in a book that’s over 300 pages long. I’m not asking her to make stuff up. But if there wasn’t more that happened on this trip, why bother writing about the journey? The thing is, I feel there were a lot of stories to be told. They were alluded to here and there, but never fleshed out to a satisfactory tale. Instead, Ms. Harris would go off on a tangent about Marco Polo or some other explorer.
Sometimes, after discussing a book at book club, I can start seeing facets of a story I didn’t see on my own. Maybe that will happen with this one. We shall see.
This full review, as well as insight from other members of my book club, can be found at https://allingoodtimeblog.wordpress.com/2019/04/10/lands-of-lost-borders-book-club/
Interesting book about a bicycle trip, taken in two parts, across the entire “Silk Road” although the putative road has many routes. While some parts gave good descriptions of the countryside and people, I would have liked a lot more. She also didn’t give much, if any, background to many of the regions she traveled. I suspect I enjoyed this because I’ve been in about half the places she traveled so I knew about them. Had I read the book wanting to know about the countries she visited, I would be disappointed. However, kudos to her and her friend for undertaking such adventurous journeys.