Riding to the Tigris
Freya Stark
Harcourt & Brace
In Riding to the Tigris Freya Stark returns to the style that made her first book, The Valleys of the Assassins, a classic among travel books. The years and experiences between have deepened and enriched her sensitivity but have not modified her method of traveling: and most of the journey from Lake Van on the high Turkish plateau, through the desolate and mountainous Hakkiari, and down to the River Tigris was achieved on horseback. She traveled alone except for muleteers whom providence provided and chance companions—a young Turkish schoolmaster with his violin, a jester with Iris mad son, and a police escort here and there—who found themselves attached to an unusual traveler, probably the first Western woman to make this journey.
History plays a minor role in this book, for even the greatest movements of people and civilizations have washed round this inhospitable, and till recently dangerous, area which contains the watershed of the Tigris and one of the spots where Noah’s ark is reputed to have touched ground.
Freya Stark has a genius for traveling on her own. It is the unexpected, in events and traveling companions, that brings out the best in her and her powers of most vivid description, whether it be falling ill in a hospital empty except for an old Kurdish woman, or an impromptu stay in nomad tents, or having her luggage searched by Turkish police, or the incongruous elements of old Iraq and modern Turkey, or the dangerous behavior of her horse every time she opened her parasol. Beyond being the story of a remarkable achievement, this book presents a philosophy both of life and travel, and it is clear that for contemplation in desolate places there is nothing like the saddle of a horse. | 
