A Traveller in China

There could hardly be a better treat for the armchair adventurer than Dodwell's vivid account of her four-month journey into remote areas of China. On a route that took her from Kashgar in the north, across the Taklamakan and Gobi deserts, into Tibet and on south to Canton, traveling by local transport, by canoe, by camel, she followed the ancient Silk Route, visited frescoed caves in the Gobi Desert, lived among Tibetan and Mongol herders, ran the rapids of the Yangtze. Her adventurousness is reminiscent of the intrepid women travelers of Victorian England (in fact, her grandmother was a correspondent in China for English newspapers at the time of the warlords). The book's excellent photos acutely observe the region and its people and evoke its painterly beauty. Dodwell's previous works include Travels with Fortune, about her 20,000-mile journey around Africa, and In Papua New Guinea, the story of her two-year sojourn there; she also took part in BBC-TV's River Journeys series, which filmed her river-rafting in New Guinea. Author tour. (March 12)