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Cloud Road: A Journey through the Inca Heartland

Launch event:
Friday 3 September at 6.00 pm
Waterstones, The Hayes, Cardiff
Free Entry

Join Cardiff explorer and author John Harrison to celebrate his return from a five month journey alone in the Inca Heartland, high in the South American Andes. Cloud Road (Parthian, 2010) is a travelogue of a deeply personal and intense journey through this largely unexplored area of South America. To launch the new book, John will give a fully illustrated account of his adventures and will be available to sign copies of Cloud Road, recounting the expedition.

In every atlas there is a country missing from the maps of South America: the Andean nation. For five months John journeys through this secret country, walking alone into remote villages where he is the first gringo the locals have ever seen, and where life continues as if Columbus had never sailed.
Travelling the secret Inca heartland, he follows the great spine road of the Inca Empire: the Camino Real, or Royal Road, from the Equator to Cuzco. Built over 500 years ago, the road crosses the most difficult and dangerous mountains in all the Americas, diving into sweltering canyons and soaring into the snows. John’s journey takes him from the heat of the Equator to the magical city of Machu Picchu. On the way, he is trapped by floods, has to deal with a difficult donkey of uncertain sex and, when he finally returns home, is hospitalized by a disintegrating back then loses the very thing that makes a homecoming worthwhile.

John worked on environmental policy for various government agencies before giving up his day job to travel and write. He became entranced with Latin America and the Polar regions and has now visited Antarctica 43 times and travelled to almost every country in Latin America. John now guides in remote regions, sometimes driving small open boats in gale force winds through swirling pack ice, which he likes a lot better than being in an office. When not travelling the globe, John resides in Cardiff.

In 2000, The Sunday Times made John’s first travel book, Where the Earth Ends (Parthian, 2008), a Book of the Week. John won the inaugural Alexander Cordell Travel Writing Competition in 2004 and again in 2006. Click here to view John's Writers of Wales profile.

Cloud Road is available to buy at all good bookshops. 
For further information, please visit the Parthian website