After completing the biography on Lord Byron I wasn't ready to leave the adventure genre. This autobiographical account by Sir Richard Francis Burton fit the bill.
One of only a few Europeans to have ever taken the Islamic pilgrimage to Mecca, Burton did so under incredibly risky circumstances. His mastery of some 25 languages (and seven years of military service in Islamic regions of India) gave him much of the training he needed to assume his eastern persona.
Taking leave from British military service and earning sponsorship from the Royal Geographical Society, his pilgrimage lasted several months in the summer and fall of 1853.
His actual visitation upon the Kaaba in Mecca - the culmination of his pilgrimage - was virtually a footnote for me. The real adventure, like life itself, was in the journey.
He spent weeks in Cairo developing his persona and perfecting his incognito role while acquiring invaluable connections, passport stamps, equipment and supplies. He then journeyed on camel back to Suez, on boat down the Red Sea, and again on camel back along with thousands of other pilgrims on the Hajj through Medina, culminating in Mecca.
He made friends, a few enemies, served as a doctor to countless Muslims from all across the East, fought in skirmishes, and just about everything in between. It's hard to imagine the richness of the experience. It was excruciatingly difficult, suffering extremes in heat and anguishing camel rides on perilous mountain passes lasting all night long. But the sense of discovery and living life to its fullest must have been intoxicating.
What an adventure. We all should be so lucky.
On to more 19th century adventure in Two Years Before the Mast which I began just this morning.
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