Arita Baaijens (b. 1956), biologist and internationally renowned travel writer, has made more than twenty-five journeys to the desert, and her many books about her travels of discovery have garnered her the Women of Discovery Award in 2014 and the Traveller of the Year award. She earlier published A Rain of Eternal Fire and the travelogue Desert Song (translated into English and German).
(Contact, 2003, 255 pages)
Arita Baaijens feels most at home in the desert: the silence, the peace, the endless plains, the sobriety, the hardship, the scarce human contact – Baaijens finds it all far preferable to the noisy chaos of the West. In Desert Nomads she recounts the story of two spectacular treks through the inhospitable, deserted Northern Sudan, through the province of Darfur, which borders on Chad, Libya and Egypt.
(Atlas Contact, 2016, 280 pages)
Arita Baaijens’ twenty-year obsession with the African desert has been dis- placed by her search for Shambhala, the mythical earthly paradise somewhere in the immense Altai. As she travelled through the rough mountainous region, she discovered paradise – not so much in the Altai as in herself. Looking for Paradise is her account of her travels, both within and without herself.
