The Kon -Tiki Expedition

I came to know about the legendary Kon-Tiki expedition when I was in middle school. There was a chapter in the English Main Course Book about the mystery of the Easter Islands. And in that chapter, there was a brief mention about how the Norwegian ethnographer Thor Heyerdahl and five other colleagues managed to reach Polynesia from Peru aboard a plain old wooden raft. Madness! Why would anyone do that? I had wondered. For about 8 years, the legend of Kon-Tiki lingered faintly somewhere in the deep recesses of my head. A couple of months ago, while I was aimlessly wandering around the humanities library at Purdue, I came across Thor Heyerdahl's travelogue and that English textbook chapter came rushing back into my mind :)

The book that I am talking about is called, "The Kon-Tiki Expedition". Translated from Norwegian, the book is a narrative travelogue written in first person by Heyerdahl himself. It talks about how and why he was driven on this insane and life threatening journey (fueled by the desire to prove his theory that the Polynesians were descendents of the Incas), and details his remarkable adventures on the high seas.



(Yes, they traveled more than 8000 kilometers non-stop on the Pacific Ocean aboard this raft, with no contact with the outside world except through a small wireless transmitter and receiver)


The book is a wonderful read with delightful anecdotes, insightful theory and splendid description.

If you like reading adventure books, you should definitely read this one. If you've never tried the narrative non-fiction genre, then this book is a good place to start.

And if you've read other books from this genre, I'd be glad if you could share them with me!