Books
Overseas buyers (USA and UK), please click here to purchase:
Australian buyers – until the page is updated, please contact Paula by email at paula@www.constanttrek.com to order.
**Please note that Paula signs all books that are sold through the website. If you would like a personalised inscription, please notify Paula by email.
About the books:
‘Sahara’ was released in October 2009. A much longer, more intense book than the first, it was an emotional roller coaster to write for me.
Review – Courier Mail, 11/10/09
Tired expressions like “up close and personal” and “blow by blow account”, even the author’s surname take on fresh vigour in Paula Constant’s travelogue. However, “there but for the grace of God” does not apply, because surely no other female would even think of undertaking her arduous walk throught the western Sahara – 7000km from M’Hamid in Morocco through Mauritania and Mali to Tillia in Niger. She loves the desert – the Big Empty, she calls it – for its variety, its 
beauty, the solitude it affords her, and the self-knowledge it develops in her. She is taken into the tents and the hearts of the nomads. But the trek also requires handling camels; learning desert lore; selecting compatible, competent guides; coping with bureaucracy.
There is exhilaration, but there is fear (bandits, landmines), discomfort (prickles festering in the skin), severe illness. The trek costs Constant her marriage; sometimes, she thinks, her sanity.
Reaching a town means supplies, a beer, perhaps speaking English and, assuming technology functions, contacting her Australian family. Poised, sometimes uncomfortably, between being tourist and native, Constant observes the daily lives and customs of the Saharawi, Tuaregs, Arabs, their racial tensions, the status of women, political and religious attitudes with unique insight and tolerance and her book is enlightening for everyone.”
REVIEW by BRUCE ELDER, SYDNEY MORNING HERALD, 5/12/09
What is it about Australian women with a sense of adventure? When they see a camel and a desert, they’re compelled to load it up or hop aboard and head for the nearest dune.
Here’s Paula Constant, who grew up in Mansfield, Victoria, doing a Robyn Davidson. Instead of the Australian desert, she’s crossing the Sahara south from M’Hamid in Morocco to Dakhla in the Western Sahara, then East to Tomboctou in Mali and Tillia in Niger, with four camels, a disintegrating marriage, and two local guides. It’s a potent combination.
The joy of the journey through the desert is provoked with such precision that the reader can almost feel the dust and heat. The pain of the marriage breakdown – her husband leaves her with the two guides in the tiny town of Assa in Southern Morocco – is described with emotional ambiguity. What makes this book so special is that from this pain and elation, Constant discovers an essential truth: “A part of me knows that my love of this place is the love of one who passes through it…I do not want to be one of the nomads with whom I sit and drink tea…I want to be among them, passing through, seeing the desert in all its guises and formations, drinking tea with every tribe I come across, not just one.”
And as she “passes through”, she sees modern day slavery; experiences the desert culture of the Berbers, Saharawi, and Tuareg; meets powerful and assertive desert women; discovers her marital status, when combined with the four camels she now owns, makes her a “good proposition”. She battles sandstorms, confronts police corruption, is defeated by bureaucratic intractability, and experiences and empathizes with the harsh and beautiful world of the desert nomads.
Like all great journeys, this is one of discovery. “Through this experience I am peeling back the layers and seeing who I really am, and what I am capable of,” she writes. The journey reveals a courageous and adventurous woman full of self confidence and self knowledge.
“Slow Journey South” was written whilst on the road from London to MHamid el Ghizlaine, during the first year of my walk, which is well documented on this site. The blurb is reprinted here:
When Paula Constant and her husband, Gary, break away from the conventional 9-5 routine in Australia, a few weeks lazing in a resort is not what they have in mind. What starts out as a daydream of “a travel to end all travels” turns into something far greater: an epic year long 5000km walk from Trafalgar Square in London to Morocco and the threshold of the Sahara desert.
Quite an ambition for an unfit woman who enjoys late nights sharing cigarettes and a few bottles of wine with friends. But if the arduous nature of walking over 25 kilometres a day through the cultural labyrinths of France, Spain, Portugal and Morocco is overlooked in her excitement, then so too is the unexpected journey of self discovery that lies beyond every bend. Both the companions she meets on the road and the road itself provide what no university can offer: a chance to experience life’s simple truths face to face.
Paula’s transformation from an urban primary school teacher to successful expeditioner is a true tale of an ordinary woman achieving something extraordinary.
As I write this I have only the one review, from the Booksellers and Publisher’s weekly. It is reprinted below:
Australian Paula Constant has written a life affirming, positive, inspiring and informative narrative of her emotional and physical journey to give up a teaching job in London and walk for three years with her husband—walking out of Trafalgar Square in central London to France, Spain and along the Camino Santiago pilgrim’s walk to Portugal. The book finishes as they reach Africa, but it is far from over as her main dream is to walk right to Cape Town. The ending is left open for a second book that will hopefully cover the remainder of their walk through the Sahara with camels, right down to Cape Town in South Africa. Paula’s voice is a fresh and
compelling one. She writes really well in this genre and is thoroughly inspirational—giving much in the way of personal learnings and insights about life. Slow Journey South will appeal to those that have an interest in travel stories, those that are interested
in walking and hiking and those that enjoy reading about Africa and the Camino Santiago. This is one of the finest examples of travel literature in a long time!
Melanie Barton is fiction category manager at Angus & Robertson
This review from Australian Bookseller & Publisher magazine is reproduced by kind permission of Thorpe-Bowker, a division of R R Bowker LLC. © Copyright 2008, Thorpe-Bowker
I loved writing them…
I hope you enjoy them.