Reviews for Edge of blue heaven

The average rating for Edge of blue heaven based on 2 reviews is 3 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2020-09-09 00:00:00 Janet Kirks Sep 9, 3pm ~~ Review asap. Sep 11, 115pm ~~ I finished this book a couple of days ago but needed time to decide what to say and how to say it. I enjoyed the book to a point. It certainly gave me the feeling of being in Mongolia, which was what I had hoped for. I have always had a soft spot for the country, not entirely sure why, but I imagine it has a lot to do with horses and wide open spaces and the nomadic traditions that are still a part of life for many people there. Besides that, I have lately discovered the Mongolian rock band The HU. I am not really into heavy metal music, but this band has something so special that the first time i heard them I went looking for more. Here is my favorite song from their album Gereg. Listen carefully and you will hear horses in the background. So, with this song taking me on flights of fancy across the steppes, I was eager for books about Mongolia. This was the first of three that I ordered. I had never read anything by this author before, but the main thing was getting myself to Mongolia and of course I am never afraid to try new authors. But I could never quite connect with Mr. Allen. This book came about because he wanted to cross the Gobi desert alone except for some camels. But to do that, he would have to make a circuit of a great part of the country and rely almost completely on the people he encountered along the way. The five-month-long journey took place just six years after Mongolia gained its independence from the Soviet Union. (and from what I have seen of other books available, many people descended on the country around the same time in order to have their own journey and write their own books.) The author is described on the back cover as "a modern-day explorer". And here he is exploring a country I would love to visit. So why didn't I like the man? Right from the first I was annoyed with him. He introduced a man he was put into contact with, a man who would travel with him during the first part of the journey, helping him with the horses and camels and camp chores, not to mention being a go-between with other Mongolians along the way. All in all, a fairly important person to have along and someone who should be respected, right? At least to my way of thinking, that is. His name was Khurmit. We see this name spelled properly just once. From then on he becomes Kermit. Every time he is mentioned in the text, in any photo caption identifying Khurmit, all through the book he has been transformed into a green frog puppet. The man was, according to Allen, proud and excited to be part of the trek, but I wonder if he would have been so thrilled if he had known about 'Kermit'. Maybe I am being too sensitive about this, but a man's name is sometimes all he has in life and should be honored, especially by someone coming from another culture, someone who is basically merely using this person for his own needs. How hard would it have been to spell Khurmit properly?! I know that in any endeavor, plans are always easier on paper than they turn out to be in real life. I remember calculating how many miles a day I would be able to walk during our 6-Day Ultramarathons, and finding out quickly enough that it is not always possible to keep to a schedule. You have to deal with so many variables that pop up each day, you can never quite live up to those grand plans. There were delays in Allen's journey that he had not planned for, and he was on a very tight schedule in order to try and beat the cold weather that would catch him alone in the Gobi desert if he didn't have everything go perfectly from Day One. Which of course it did not. He suffered from that, but his animals suffered more, many of them losing their lives with great pain. All because one man wanted to cross a desert and had to do it in a certain period of time. Allen himself admits that a true Mongolian nomad would never push his animals the way the animals of this journey were pushed. I guess that is the other aspect of this author that annoyed me. He used those poor animals as selfishly as he used the people. And while the people were open and generous with their help, the horses and camels had no choice but to endure long days of torture, pain and death just so Allen could chalk up another desert on his bucket list. When we all got to the Gobi and the camels made it clear that they did not trust Allen to see them through safely (he says that a camel needs to have complete faith in a strong leader before they will follow willingly to the ends of the earth) I rooted for the camels every time a disagreement came up and cheered every time they spit on him. Sorry Allen, but it served you right. But even with all of this negative emotion piling up as we went along, i did enjoy the basic bones of the book and the pictures were wonderful. I just don't plan ever to travel anywhere else with Mr. Allen. He is much too exhausting a travel partner.

Review # 2 was written on 2020-04-20 00:00:00 Mario Sanchez Lots of colour photos throughout as explorer Benedict Allen undertakes a journey through W Mongolia and lastly a solitary) crossing of the Gobi Desert. Much of the narrative concerns the various horses and camels which undertake bits of the journey with them- their personalities and frailties. Camels seem a moody breed; recalcitrant animals prone to vomiting bile or striking off alone and abandoning their 'master'. Allen also notes how they seem to get depressed and 'cry'when taken away from home. Allen write, too, of the overwhelming scenery and animals; he meets locals and embraces the local diet: "Those innards which I discreetly left aside now, will be saved up for me for breakfast- warmed up in tea." And observes a somewhat changing society as the younger generation adopt western ways: "While he was dismembering a sheep, his son was dismembering his jeep." And through it all, the bleakness, the brutality and the beauty- and the ever-present recollection of Genghis Khan's empire. Gives a good feel of the country