Privileged Witness

This collection of 27 travel essays written over the last decade is based on Julie Hill's journeys to far-flung destinations of the world.

Often welcomed by her hosts not as a customer or a trader but as a confessor and a friend, Julie Hill vindicates their trust and repays their kindness by bringing their stories to life in this book. She goes where most others cannot or would not, emerging with priceless observations and insights on places and lifestyles that may soon vanish in this fast-changing world.

One of the great joys of travel is reaching beyond the boundaries of geography, politics, culture, and our own perspective. With Julie, we wander to the edge of the map, where those boundaries blur, such as to the seriously remote, sensationally scenic parts of Bhutan; we examine Myanmar's complex history, diversity, and changing society. In India's Varanasi, Hinduism's most important pilgrimage site, we look at the stirring soul of India from a boat on the sacred Ganges.

There is so much to see, do, and fall in love with in Africa, from Ethiopia's entrancingly remote regions to Mali's mystical Timbuktu, going on safari in Namibia or standing in the spray of the mighty Victoria Falls in Zimbabwe. As lush as a dream of green heaven, Papua New Guinea's air comes alive with Picasso birds, and its jungles, mountains, and people mesmerize the visitor. Along the Sepik we encounter river dwellers in villages with no name. Here we see man in his environment as it as been for thousands of years, and can almost believe the world was born yesterday.

With an intense curiosity about the places she visits and in intelligible, jargon-free prose, Julie Hill examines the delights, wonders, and conflicts of the natural and human world, seeking to rediscover, as Anatole France put it, "the original harmony which once existed between man and the universe."