A Short Ride in the Jungle: The Ho Chi Minh Trail by Motorcycle

This is not only the thrilling tale of a daring adventure on an aging motorcycle; it is also the story of Southeast Asia’s legendary Ho Chi Minh Trail, and of a war, the effects of which can still be seen across the region and in the hearts of not only its people but of the many Americans whose lives were touched forever by it. Follow Antonia as she retraces the footsteps and tank tracks of this famous supply line through the mountains and jungles of Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia. Alone on a diminutive pink motorcycle, she encounters bomb craters, unexploded ordnance, mud, mountains, jungle, disappointment, and triumph--and almost without fail, cheerful and generous people along her path.

Antonia Bolingbroke-Kent--better known as Ants--is an English writer whose favourite occupation is embarking on very long journeys in unsuitable vehicles; a habit which started in 2006 when she drove a bright pink tuk tuk from Bangkok, Thailand to Brighton, England with her friend Jo. Through the trip the duo raised ＄75,000 for charity, set the world record for the longest ever journey by auto-rickshaw, wrote a best-selling travel book, Tuk Tuk to the Road, and won Cosmopolitan magazine’s Fun Fearless Female Award. Since then, she has ridden a Honda C90 3,000 miles around the Black Sea, organised the Mongol Derby, the longest horse race in the world, and survived an attempt to reach the Arctic Circle on an old Russian Ural with sidecar. She writes regularly for publications such as Overland Journal (USA), Adventure Journal (USA), Ride (UK), Wanderlust (UK), The Guardian (UK) and Overland (UK). She’s also appeared on numerous radio and television shows, including the very popular UK chat show Richard & Judy and BBC Radio 4’s Excess Baggage. She has contributed chapters to anthologies including Flightless (Lonely Planet) and A Girl’s Guide to Travelling Alone, and through her blog, www.theitinerant.co.uk, was voted one of the ＂Top 100 travellers to follow on social media in 2014.＂ (Twitter: @AntsBK, Facebook: www.facebook.com/AntoniaBolingbroke-Kent). She’s also a regular public speaker at schools, travel shows, the Royal Geographic Society, and adventure, literary, and motorcycle festivals. In between travelling and writing, she works as a freelance television producer, making travel, adventure, and history documentary programmes for the BBC, National Geographic, Channel 4, and ITV. A Short Ride in the Jungle was published in the UK by Summersdale in April 2014 to great reviews: it has been variously described as ＂beautifully written...jaw-dropping...truly wonderful...exceptionally well-researched...fantastic...part travelogue, part thriller...a classic to be.＂