The Places In Between by Rory Stewart

To look at Rory you would imagine he would have to wrap up well to go to the local garage to buy a Kit Kat, but do not let his outward appearance deceive you.  Rory is as physically resilient as a mountain dog, and endowed with such a sense of self confidence that he believed he could walk for twenty months across the mountains of Afghanistan, through the winter, and not get himself killed. 

Sometimes he came close to getting killed; and at various times he was shot at, punched, had stones thrown at him, and was threatened by random men brandishing weapons left behind by the Russians and the Taliban.  Whenever anything like that happened, he squared up to his assailants and insisted he was a historian writing a book, and he had every right to be there as he was carrying letters from various leaders he had stayed with along the way.

Rory is indeed an historian, and the purpose of his walk was to follow in the footsteps of Babur, the first emperor of Mughal India.  He was also no stranger to long walks as he had already spent sixteen months walking across Iran, Pakistan, India and Nepal, but the walk across Afghanistan would be far more dangerous as it began in 2002 just after the Taliban had left and the population were justifiably suspicious of strangers.

By the time I finished the book, I had come to the conclusion that Rory is one of life's great adventurers who undertakes his journeys for much deeper reasons than the classic 'because it was there'.  He doesn't seek to out-walk anyone, he's not setting any records but he wants to experience history for himself and then share with those of us who would never dare to do it ourselves.