Wanderlust: The Amazing Ida Pfeiffer by John Van Wyhe (review)

This well-researched book on the amazing feat of the Austrian Ida Pfeiffer, documents her five adventurous journeys around the world starting with her first voyage to the Holy Land that traverses historical sites such as Smyrna, Beirut, Caesarea, and Jerusalem, the holy city central to various events in biblical history. The journey that started in late March 1842 took around six months. Her second journey to Iceland was to satisfy her romantic sensibility of visiting a remote place with immense natural wonders boasting a geography that included tundra, lakes, glaciers, geysers to volcanoes. During the six-month journey from April to October 1845, she visited Copenhagen, Hafnarfjörðour (Harbour Fjord), Reykjavík, Krýsuvík, a geothermal area, Gullfoss (Golden Falls), Mount Hekla, a volcano, Stockholm and Christiania (now Oslo). In 1846–1848, she circled the globe in 900 days as an expression of her wanderlust in her third voyage from Vienna to Prague, Brazil, Chile, Tahiti, Macao, Hong Kong, Canton, Singapore, Colombo and Kandy in Sri Lanka, Calcutta, Benares, Agra, Delhi, Hyderabad and Bombay in India, Assyria, Baghdad, Mosul, Urmia (Iran today), Nakhchivan and Yerevan in Armenia, Tbilisi and Redut Kale (present-day Kulevi) in Georgia, Odessa in Russia, Constantinople, Athens and Trieste before arriving home again in Vienna. Her fourth voyage from 1851–1855, included these localities: Prague, Hamburg, London, Cape Town, Singapore, Kuching and Sirambau in Sarawak before venturing into the heart of Borneo—Sintang, Landak, Pontianak, and Sambas. In this leg of the journey she also explored Java, Sumatra, the Maluku Islands, Sulawesi, Panama, Peru, Ecuador, California, New Orleans, Minnesota, Chicago, New York, Montreal, and Portugal. Her last journey was to Madagascar (1856–1858), presumably, because of the potential wealth of natural history specimens that may be handy to fund her next voyage. She caught the 'Madagascar fever' during this trip, however, and died aged 61 at her brother's residence in Vienna on 27 October 1858.

Her travels were also contextualized with the feats of the famous male travellers in history, namely Marco Polo, Captain Cook and Ibn Battuta, all of whom she surpassed in terms of the distance covered. Compared with female travellers preceding or during her time, for example, Maria Merian, Lady Hester Stanhope, Lady Mary Montagu and the Prussian Countess Ida Hahn-hahn, she stood out for venturing by herself on a limited budget. She typically travelled second or third class on steamers. Sailing on a crowded brig from Beirut to Alexandria for eleven nights she had no privacy. Others slept or used her mat whenever she left it momentarily and even used her toothbrush without asking. Travelling from Cairo on camel for the first time across the desert and unable to afford the rest houses, she slept outside their grounds. She survived numerous adventures on her trip including turbulent seas, robbery, threats that she would be killed and devoured and near drowning in a remarkably calm manner. Her experiences of living through poverty for nearly ten years after her husband lost his wealth, and her own wanderlust, stood her in good stead during these formidable encounters. She also learnt the skills needed to collect and preserve natural history specimens which she would sell to museums in order to fund her trips.

Her adventurous spirit knew no bounds. She ventured to Telemark, Norway, though it was difficult for a woman to travel alone among the peasantry particularly with almost rudimentary command of the language. Places to which no Europeans had ventured or where the local men were killed, for example in Sumatra, seemed instead to spur her on rather than deter her spirits. Her wanderlust was ignited by the man she loved who had spurned her. It became an escape route that enabled her to follow her heart, particularly after the constraining life growing up under the dictates of her mother. These observations allowed us glimpses of the circumstances that drove her to embark on these remarkable journeys. Nevertheless...