Published by National Geographic, 2001, 319 pages

This is unlike any travel book by a woman that I’ve read so far. Kira Salak is an adventurer in the real sense of the word—she lets nothing stop her, whether it’s fear of the unknown (and sometimes the known), the delirium of fever or having to trek through impenetrable jungle. A part of me wanted to shake her for taking such crazy risks while another part was rooting for her to complete her journey.

Salak is driven by her emotional baggage, a need to prove herself to her aloof parents. Their rather unorthodox way of child rearing included not setting boundaries just because she was a girl. This partly explains why she didn’t think twice about taking risks. 

Everyone Salak meets warns her off going to Papua New Guinea on her own, except for the Papuan women at the YWCA in the capital, Port Moresby. They are excited at her plans to go up the rivers into PNG’s deepest jungle and suggest their “wantoks”—people from the same tribe or family, or just good friends—with whom she can stay on the way.

Her trip is as fascinating as it is harrowing. She is abandoned at a remote village by the man she paid to take her up the river. At one point in her trip, the only way to reach her next destination is to hike through miles of forest. A woman from the village she is staying in, Mila, offers to take her. The hike tests Salak to her limits.

“The rain is torrential. In the heavy humidity, I cannot tell the difference between water and sweat. I plow through the knee-deep muck of our trail, my pack is weighing me down, sinking me deeper into the muck.” They go over mountains so steep that Salak had to pull herself up using tree roots. And all the time, Mila seems barely to break a sweat!

Because of the way she travels and her determination, Salak manages to penetrate places tourists don’t see. In the north, she goes to the camp of Free Papua Guerrilla Movement. The guerrillas were fighting for independence from Indonesia for their home, New Guinea, the other half of the island. The stories they tell her are heart-breaking, and depressingly common in today’s world.

Salak brings it all alive. She writes lyrically about the PNG landscape: “We’re travelling up the Wogamush river. … All is lush and vibrant in this country—I’ve never seen a place so rich, so bursting with colour. Not even Tahiti had so many rainbows capriciously streaking the sky… And the green! Such green, everywhere. The darker green of the wild sugarcane lining the shores, and the sultry green of the rainforest beyond.”

I would recommend reading Four Corners. It is a personal book, and along with the vivid account of her travels, it is also a voyage of self-discovery. I have to say that I was very glad to go on this expedition with her while sitting safely on my sofa!

This review first appeared on Women on the Road.