Prince Borghese's Trail: 10,000 Miles over Two Continents, Four Desserts, and the Roof of the World in the Peking to Paris Motor Challenge

by Genevieve Obert

Two women who scarcely know each other, but with a common love of exotic landscape, vintage wheels, and high adventure (one a well-heeled Pacific Heights motorcycle enthusiast, the other a Santa Cruz-based automotive journalist, car fanatic, and mother of two small children) join forces to tackle an arduous endurance rally, driving a classic car over ten thousand miles of rough and exotic terrain in the Peking to Paris Motor Challenge. Prince Borghese's Trail is a classic travel adventure narrative in the tradition of Alexandra David-Neel and Beryl Markham.

Genres: Nonfiction, Travel

308 pages, Hardcover

First published October 1, 1999

Reviews

[Rachel Callahan · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is a fascinating journal of an insane undertaking. I regret I waited until now to read it, since my dad’s journals were used heavily in writing it, and stories about him are peppered throughout. There’s a bit of a barrier of “car talk”, especially at the beginning of the book. It takes some skimming of automotive technicalities in the first few pages to get into the story. But the perspectives on each country they drove through and the parallels of the journeys in 1907 and 1997 are very intriguing. It both made me want to do something crazy like this and made me never want to do something crazy like this. I’ve always said this race would have been a social media viral even if it had happened 15 years later and I still think so.

[Anndee · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book was fascinating from both a travel perspective as well as from the female perspective. It's a travel log of a 7 week long road rally using vintage cars crossing both Asia and Europe.