From Publishers Weekly
Novelist Kincaid tells of her journey into the foothills of the Himalayas in search of rare plants to bring home to her Vermont garden. Much of the book feels repetitive, in an almost meditative way, as the author uses plain yet lyrical language to record the quotidian details of life in the wilderness. For Kincaid, everything on this trip—eating, sleeping, bathing—requires more effort than usual and sometimes even instills anxiety. Kincaid's details of meals and sleepless nights do grow tedious, and it isn't clear if the author is glad she decided to accompany her botanist friends on their trek, considering the constant threat of leeches and, much worse, the not unlikely (as she portrays it) possibility of losing her life at the hands of anti-American Maoist guerrillas ("Nothing could be more disturbing than sleeping in a village under the control of people who may or may not let you live"). Kincaid's fear never abates: "At some point I stopped making a distinction between the Maoists and the leeches." Occasionally, however, she is overcome with the beauty of the night sky, pilgrim destinations such as a sacred lake in Topke Gola, or the abundant flora, particularly "rhododendrons that were not shrubs, but trees thirty feet tall." This book is as much about a place as it is about overcoming fears and embracing the unfamiliar. Photos. Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist
Kincaid brings her uniquely heightened sensibility and remarkable ability to evoke with equal vividness both inner and outer worlds to a gripping and poetic account of a life-changing plant-hunting expedition in Nepal. Kincaid, whose earlier plant writings are found in My Garden [Book] (1999), hiked in the Himalaya in the company of American plantsman Daniel Hinkley, husband and wife botanists from Wales, Sherpas, a cook, and ornery porters. Preternaturally observant and piquantly candid, she has an extraordinary facility for capturing the moment; for describing how the sky seems domed at high altitudes; how delicious the simplest of food is when living outdoors; how she copes with the horror of a plague of leeches; how being among these mysterious mountains alters her sense of distance, time, life. To add to the physical arduousness and psychological demands of their long trek was the threat of Maoist guerillas, and Kincaid finds herself astonished by and grateful for everything. "Nothing was as I knew it to be," she writes, and that is the sign of a truly momentous journey. Donna Seaman
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Book Description
"This account of a walk I took while gathering the seeds of flowering plants in the foothills of the Himalayas has its origins in my love of the garden�my love of feeling isolated, of imagining myself all alone in the world and everything unfamiliar, or the familiar being strange, my love of being afraid but at the same time not letting my fear stand in the way." So begins Jamaica Kincaid's adventure into the mountains of Nepal with a small group of botanists. After laborious training and preparation, the group leaves Kathmandu by small plane, into the Annapurna Valley to begin their trek. ("From inside the plane it always seemed to me as if we were about to collide with these sharp green peaks, I especially thought this would be true when I saw one of the pilots reading the newspaper, but Dan said that at the other times he'd flown in this part of the world the pilots always read the newspaper and it did not seem to affect the flight in a bad way.") The temperature was 96 degrees F. on arrival, and the little airport in Tumlingtar was awash in Maoists in camouflage fatigues. "What I was about to do, what I had in mind to do, what I planned for over a year to do, was still a mystery to me. I was on the edge of it though." The group sets off with a large retinue of sherpas and bearers, and Kincaid, in simple, richly detailed prose describes the landscape, the Nepalese villages, the passing trekkers and yak herds. Direct and opinionated ("We decided to call them [other trekkers] the Germans because we didn't like them from the look of them�and Germans seem to be the one group of people left that cannot be liked because you feel like it."), Kincaid moves easily between closely observed, down-to-earth descriptions of the trek and larger musings, about gardens, nature, seed gathering, home, and family. Negotiations with the Maoists to pass through villages interject dramatic notes ("Dan and I became Canadians. Until then I would never have dreamt of calling myself anything other than American. But the Maoists had told Sunam [head sherpa] that President Powell had just been to Kathmandu and denounced them as terrorists and that had made them very angry with President Powell."). The group presses on, determined in its search for "beautiful plants native to the Himalayas but will grow happily in Vermont or somewhere like that." Eventually they reach a spectacular pass at 15,600 feet and start back. Down at the village of Donge they have another run-in with the Maoists. They "lectured us all through the afternoon into the setting sun, mentioning again the indignity of being called mere terrorists by President Powell of the United States." To lessen the tension, the sherpas produces some Chang, an alcohol made from millet, intoxicating everyone, Kincaid included. At the airport, the Maoists are threatening attack, but the group must wait three days for an airplane. Finally they get off safely. "Days later, in Kathmandu, we heard that the very airport where we had camped for days had been attacked by Maoists and some people had been killed." In Kathmandu another Maoist attack closes the city down. "As we waited to leave this place, I remembered the carpet of gentians�and the isolated but thick patches of Delphinium abloom in the melting snow. There were the forests of rhododendrons, specimens thirty feet high�I remembered all that I had seen but I especially remembered all that I had felt. I remembered my fears. I remembered how practically every step was fraught with memories of my past, and the immediate one of my son Harold all alone in Vermont, and my love for it and my fear of losing it."

FROM THE PUBLISHER

"Anyone familiar with Jamaica Kincaid's work knows that the natural world and, in particular, plants and gardening are especially close to her heart. Along with such acclaimed novels as Annie John and Lucy, she's also the author of My Garden (Book), a collection of essays. Now, in this travel memoir, she invites us to accompany her on a seed-gathering trek in the Himalayas." "For Kincaid and three botanist friends, Nepal is a paradise, a place where a single day's hike can traverse climate zones from subtropical to alpine, encompassing flora suitable for growing in their home grounds from Wales to Vermont. And as she makes clear, there is far more to this foreign world than rhododendrons that grow thirty feet high. Danger too is a constant companion - and the leeches are the least of the worries." For along with the narrow paths that skirt vertiginous drops, these mountains are haunted by Maoist guerillas, and when they appear - as they do more than once - their enigmatic menace lingers long after they have melted away into the landscape. And Kincaid explores the irony of her status as memsahib with Sherpas and bearers - and understands that the liberating, exotic pleasures of travel are inextricably intertwined with the everyday pleasures of home and family.

FROM THE CRITICS

Publishers Weekly

Novelist Kincaid tells of her journey into the foothills of the Himalayas in search of rare plants to bring home to her Vermont garden. Much of the book feels repetitive, in an almost meditative way, as the author uses plain yet lyrical language to record the quotidian details of life in the wilderness. For Kincaid, everything on this trip-eating, sleeping, bathing-requires more effort than usual and sometimes even instills anxiety. Kincaid's details of meals and sleepless nights do grow tedious, and it isn't clear if the author is glad she decided to accompany her botanist friends on their trek, considering the constant threat of leeches and, much worse, the not unlikely (as she portrays it) possibility of losing her life at the hands of anti-American Maoist guerrillas ("Nothing could be more disturbing than sleeping in a village under the control of people who may or may not let you live"). Kincaid's fear never abates: "At some point I stopped making a distinction between the Maoists and the leeches." Occasionally, however, she is overcome with the beauty of the night sky, pilgrim destinations such as a sacred lake in Topke Gola, or the abundant flora, particularly "rhododendrons that were not shrubs, but trees thirty feet tall." This book is as much about a place as it is about overcoming fears and embracing the unfamiliar. Photos. (Jan.) Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.

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