Published by Road Dog Publications, 2014, 384 pages

The Ho Chi Minh Trail was a feat of engineering constructed during the Viet Nam war to supply manpower and material to the North Vietnamese army. It runs from north to south Viet Nam, slipping into Laos and Cambodia and then back into Viet Nam. In 2012, Antonia Bolingbroke-Kent was sent to reconnoiter the trail for the BBC series, The World’s Most Dangerous Roads. A year later she decided to go back and ride it on her own.

Her trusty steed is the Pink Panther, a bright pink Honda C90, a small bike—somewhere between a motorcycle and a moped. She picks up the Panther in Hanoi for a journey that will take her through dense forests, muddy roads and tiny villages. These are not places on the tourist map and all the more fascinating for that.

It takes courage for a woman to ride the Trail alone. But, as Bolingbroke-Kent explains, “Company makes us idle, gives us masks to hide behind, allows us to avoid our weaknesses and cushions our fears. By peeling away these protective layers I wanted to see how I would cope, find out what I was really made of, emotionally and physically.” And the Trail does test the limits of her endurance, especially when she insists on pushing through mud to reach her destination and the Panther breaks down, leaving her alone in the Cambodian jungle. She eventually does find help and makes it through.

Bolingbroke-Kent also provides a history of the Viet Nam war and the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia. The book doesn’t just move between the past and present—the borders between the two feel porous, and the past encroaches on, and is still alive in, the present.

Because of the American bombing campaigns to destroy the Trail, the area is full of unexploded ordnances (UXOs). Villagers take the metal from downed planes either to sell or to use in their houses. In Cambodia, there is second-generation post-traumatic stress disorder from the Khmer Rouge days.

This is a very rich account, full of the realities of life in all three countries.

It tells how mining and illegal logging are destroying the environment, how the author often stays in brothels (the only hotels in small villages), how people go out of their way to help.

When she has trouble crossing a river in Laos, a woman moves a group of kids into action, and before long, the Panther is safe and dry on the opposite bank. When she is stranded in a Cambodian jungle, a passerby on a bike picks her up and asks her to join him and his wife for a meal. In Saigon over New Year, a woman at a Buddhist shrine takes Bolingbroke-Kent to meet her family. She meets people who were on opposite sides during the but war but have moved past the enmity to become friends.

This book is funny, sobering and inspiring. And hats off to Bolingbroke-Kent for (almost) never saying “no” to an adventure!

Read my interview with Antonia Bolingbroke-Kent.

This review first appeared on Women on the Road.