I’m at my favorite used bookstore in Calgary, head tilted, scanning the titles in the travel and world history section, tickling my fingers across their smooth spines: Bryson, Ferguson, Kerouac, Miller, Theroux. There’s usually a copy of Long Way Round by McGregor and Boorman, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance often makes an appearance, as does Steinbeck’s Travels with Charley. I eventually find a diamond in the rough—a copy of The Desert and the Sown by Gertrude Bell. This isn’t the first time I’ve noticed the lack of travel tales published by women. They’re out there; you just have to do some digging to uncover them.
One year ago, on International Women’s Day, my first historical overland piece was published on Expedition Portal. It followed journalists Ella Maillart and Annemarie Schwarzenbach’s journey from Switzerland to Afghanistan in a 1939 Ford Deluxe Roadster. I fell in love with these women. Maillart published a series of fascinating books chronicling her trips from Soviet Turkestan to Manchuria, while my heart went out to Schwarzenbach as she struggled with a morphine addiction while carrying out a significant crop of investigative journalism around the globe. Eighty-two years after they became the first European women to travel Afghanistan’s Northern Road, I consumed their words voraciously, relating to their mindset and the reasons behind their travels. I marked up my copy of Maillart’s book, highlighting excerpts enthusiastically, appreciating her ability to put into words how travel feels on a particularly rewarding day; “…unencumbered by possessions, everywhere at home, intensely alive, without masters, unlimited by nationality,” she wrote.
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Since my first piece about Maillart and Schwarzenbach, I’ve tracked down difficult-to-find newspaper articles, thumbed through yellowed pages of out-of-print books, and relished in the tales told by various brave storytellers, curious adventurers, and risk-taking pioneers of overland travel. I’ve ridden with Kittie Knox by bicycle in Boston, felt the stifling heat of the Sahara desert with Theresa Wallach and Florence Blenkiron, followed along as Davies, Sims, and Deacock became the first European women to venture into Zanskar, a far-off valley between India and Tibet. I learned about the Mau Mau uprising from Dorothy Rogers and laughed as she and Louise Ostberg showed up the gentlemen of the Oxford-Cambridge Expedition in Tripoli, Libya. During a long, cold winter locked down in Calgary, these stories proved an effective (but temporary) cure for a raging case of wanderlust. Released into the world once again, I visited the Nabataean city of Hegra and wandered the remains of the Hijaz Railway because of Barbara Toy’s book, Traveling the Incense Route.
These women were tough as nails. They traveled in the discomfort of antiquated vehicles and defied cultural, racial, and gender norms. They were pioneers, rule-breakers, and the definition of badass. To my great frustration, there is little assurance that many of these stories will live on. Of Toy’s eight books, I’ve successfully tracked down two, and all remain out of print but one. Next to nothing can be found online about Dorothy Rogers, but I’ve obtained delicate but original copies of Jeopardy and a Jeep and Highways Across the Heaven from overseas. What can we do to keep these stories alive? Create demand. Next time you purchase a copy of Jupiter’s Travels or the First Overland, drop a copy of Call to Adventure by Aloha Wanderwell, The Cruel Way by Ella Maillart, or Sanmao’s Stories of the Sahara into your shopping cart. Alternatively, read this Alpine Journal article written by Anne Davies.
I am clearly an overland history nut drawn to romantic accounts of the past, but I also firmly believe in the importance of contemporary travel writing, especially by women. The yearning to encounter something through the eyes and experiences of others is one of the principal values of overland travel. Currently, Overland Journal and Expedition Portal article pitches are dominated by men. Ladies, consider this an open invitation to tell your stories too. Perhaps 82 years from now, they too will impact a young woman looking to the past for inspiration.
From the Expedition Portal Archives:
International Women’s Day: Bertha Benz, Jessica Michael
In August of 1888, Bertha Benz loaded her two teenage sons into a Model III and headed 106 kilometers to visit her mother. This was no ordinary road trip—it was the first long-distance automobile adventure ever, and it changed the world.
The Legacy of Cyclist Kittie Knox
Katherine Towle Knox, known as Kittie, was born in Cambridgeport, Massachusetts, in 1874 to her white mother, Katherine Towle, and African American father, John H. Knox. As a youngster, Kittie showed interest in cycling and eventually saved enough money as a seamstress to buy a bicycle. She took to the unpaved, congested streets of Boston and Cambridge and joined the first black cycling group, the Riverside Cycle Club, in 1893.
Pioneers of Moto History: The Van Buren Sisters’ 1916 Ride Across America
In August of 1916, sisters Adeline and Augusta Van Buren found themselves stranded in Skull Valley, an arid expanse of desert between Salt Lake City, Utah, and Reno, Nevada. Despite being part of the Lincoln Highway, the desolate track along which they navigated their three-speed Indian Powerplus motorcycles had vanished. Their water and fuel levels were low. It appeared that the sisters’ transcontinental trip was in jeopardy. Surely, after thousands of miles, this couldn’t be the end. Could it?
Meet Aloha Wanderwell, The First Woman to Drive Around the World, Tena Overacker
Sixteen-year old, multinational expat Idris Galcia Hall happened across a want ad on a scrap of the Nice, France, newspaper found tucked into a romantic novelette at the convent school she attended. Or so the story goes. It read Beauty, Brains, and Breeches—World Tour Offer for Lucky Young Woman…
The Legendary Bessie Stringfield, Essence Nyrie
In 1911, a true motorcycling legend, Betsy Leonora Ellis, was born in Kingston, Jamaica; she would later go by Bessie and take on the last name of a spouse. She was tragically orphaned at a young age, then adopted and raised by a well-off Irish woman who would raise her Catholic. The gift of her faith was second to none, but close in impact was surely the motorcycle her mother gave her at the age of 16: a 1928 Indian Scout.
The Rugged Road :: A Sidecar Journey from London to Cape Town
It was New Year’s Day, 1 January 1935, when Theresa Wallach and Florence Blenkiron sat in the postmaster’s house in El Goléa, Algeria, listening to Big Ben chime over the wireless radio. Rather than evoking a reassurance or wistfulness for home, the sounds and news from England brought forth something much more powerful.
This Daring Duo Drove Afghanistan’s Northern Road in a 1939 Ford
After three months and thousands of miles on pothole-ridden roads, Ella Maillart and Annemarie Schwarzenbach arrived to disappointing news in Herat, Afghanistan. The last snowfall in the region was a heavy one, and the spring snowmelt had destroyed the gateway to Afghanistan’s North Road—the Murghau Bridge. Eyeing their 1939 Ford Deluxe Roadster, a young Polish engineer warned the women against continuing on.
Jeopardy and a Jeep: Africa Conquered by Two Women Professors
During the summer of 1954, two American college professors named Dorothy Rogers and Louise Ostberg pulled their Willys Wagon into a mechanic shop in Tripoli, Libya. After 25,000 challenging miles from France to Algeria, crossing the Sahara Desert and jungles of the Congo to the southern tip of the continent, and heading back north through Cairo and along the North African coast, their current set of tires were arguably more patchwork than rubber.
The 1958 Women’s Overland Himalayan Expedition
After traveling 8,000 miles over six weeks through Western Germany, Austria, Yugoslavia, Greece, Turkey, Iran, and Pakistan, overland adventuresses Anne Davies, Eve Sims, and Antonia Deacock found themselves in Indian Prime Minister Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru’s drawing room, poring over a large-scale map of the Himalayas laid on a soft white carpet. The “Inner Line,” a buffer state across India and Tibet into which travelers were allowed in only the rarest of cases, was clearly marked in green on the map in front of them.
Travelling the Incense Route with Barbara Toy
Four-thousand feet above sea level, Barbara Toy sits beneath a large acacia tree in Northern Yemen, sharing a meal of rice colored with saffron, tuna, and onions with several rugged Bedouin from the local Yam tribe, two elderly pilgrims, her guide Hassan, and two lorry drivers. The group murmurs about four Bedouin killed the previous day by bombs dropped into a nearby wadi. Hundreds of pilgrims, en route to Mecca, bask in the shade, resting in groups amongst nearby rocks. Suddenly, the drone of a bomber plane breaks the desert silence.
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