Trek is an excellent book. As well as being a factual account of a trek across Africa in the 1950's, it is a pacy thriller. Right from the start I knew something bad was going to happen to the four people who set off from Kenya to drive to London - but not what or when. We take for granted satellite navigation and mobile-phone communication - imagine travelling across the Sahara desert in a Morris traveller, using only maps, without any back-up vehicles or means of summoning help. Trek is full of carefully-researched information about the history and geography of the countries visited, which now look very different on the map. It interweaves the early 90s when Paul Stewart wrote the book, and the 50s - the information gleaned from diaries and interviews with the survivors is written as a story, so the reader is drawn into events as they unfold. I enjoyed the detail - the animals encountered along the way, the constant bugs, times when the luggage would crash down on the back-seat passengers as the car bounced across potholes. Details are also given of what happens to the body with extreme heat, and the process of dying of thirst.
Trek is a story of a disaster waiting to happen, and yet the saddest aspect of the story, the tragedy, is not that the travellers set out in the first place, but that they were so close to being rescued when disaster struck. How one person, the diary-keeper of the journey, came to be rescued, is a real tear-jerker. Trek is a fascinating read, a page turner to the end.
