Wortley’s upcoming trip to Iran will be her third and latest Woman With Altitude expedition, a project she launched shortly before her 2017 trip to India.
Two years later, she followed the wanderings of another female traveler, 20th-century poet Nan Shepherd, through the lochs and granite crags of the Scottish highlands. In faux-fur boots, Wortley walked from Lachen, India, to Kanchenjunga, the third tallest mountain in the world, at the border with Nepal.
In November 2017, she undertook a 108-mile trek to retrace a portion of David-Néel’s 14-year expedition in India. Full of wit and rich in detail - and also in humanity - her writing brings to vivid life the stories of the ancient kingdoms of the Middle East.This isn’t the first time Wortley has set off on such an adventure. Hailed as a classic upon its first publication in 1934, The Valleys of the Assassins is an absorbing account of people and place. Stark was a woman of indefatigable energy, who often travelled with only a single guide and on a shoestring budget, and who was undeterred by discomfort and danger. Entering Luristan on a mule, draped in native clothing, Freya bluffs her way past border guards and sets off into uncharted territory places where few Europeans, and no European women, had ventured. The Valleys of the Assassins chronicles Stark's treks into the wilderness of western Iran on the hunt for treasure and in an attempt to locate the long-fabled Assassins in Alumut, an ancient Persian sect. Boarding a cargo ship to Beirut in 1927, she went on to became one of her generation's most intrepid explorers - her adventures would take her to remote areas in Turkey, the Middle East and Asia.
But it wasn't until she was in her thirties that she was able to leave Europe. Growing up in near-poverty and denied a formal education, Freya Stark had nurtured a fascination for the Middle East since reading Arabian Nights as a child.
'If I were asked to enumerate the pleasures of travel, this would be one of the greatest among them - that so often and so unexpectedly you meet the best in human nature.' INTRODUCED BY MONISHA RAJESH, award-winning author of Around the World in 80 Trains
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