Journeys in Persia and Kurdistan: 001 - Softcover

In January 1890 Isabella Bird (1831-1904), aged fifty-nine and four years a widow, began the toughest single journey of her life. Already a veteran of expeditions to the Rocky Mountains, Japan and Malaysia, her challenge this time was a series of punishing journeys into Persia and Kurdistan, Tibet and Ladakh, Korea and China. Escorted by Major Herbert Sawyer, she left Baghdad and toiled for six weeks in appalling winter conditions, across uncharted mountainous territory, to arrive 'nearly blind from fatigue' in Tehran. A month later she set out on another, hardly less exacting exploration of a remote part of Luristan. Exceptionally courageous and stoical, she yearned for the 'untrammelled freedom of the wilds' and relished every new experience - from wandering disguised in city bazaars to enduring squalid caravanserais, from meeting by chance the Shah of Persia to administering to the nomadic Bakhtiari Lurs.