The book is rather terse, presenting seven years of travel in 24 chapters and about 220 pages. Wendy has hitched from London to Lahore in India within the first chapter, glossing over details on the way. That sets the pace for the entire book, which is best read with an atlas on hand, as the text races about the world at a relentless pace. The text is almost childishly simple in style, as if aimed at children, and Wendy portrays the picture of a very proper and naive young lady with a bundle of courage.
Wendy hitched most of the way, though not in the classic sense, thumb extended by the side of the road. To be sure, she covered some great stretches just like that, but one of the most striking features of the book (for a reader in the '90s looking back on an account of world travel in the '60s) is just how much the very essence of travel has changed in that time. While there is still much hospitality in this great world of ours, I would challenge anyone to find it so openly and freely as Wendy did then.
In the '60s what Wendy was doing was, perhaps, not unique, but it was breaking very fertile new ground. The solo backpacker was a very unusual sight that stirred the sympathies of many. Wherever she went, she encountered the most warming hospitality from local people from all walks of life. She zig-zagged through all of the inhabited continents, through the rich and the poor, the peaceful and the warring. Indeed, on occasion her courage and curiosity bordered on folly.
People who picked her up were so often beguiled by the fact of a young English girl making her way solo around the world that they invited her to stay. They referred her to friends and paid her fares. She stayed with peasants and with kings and all sorts between. In many places, the local media invited her to interviews and accommodated her. One contact provided another in a chain that led ultimately around the world. The friends she made bought her plane tickets and boat tickets and drove her around.
