To awaken quite alone in a strange town is one of the most pleasant sensations in the world. You are surrounded by adventure. You have no idea of what is in store for you, but you will, if you are wise and know the art of travel, let yourself go into the stream of the unknown.
- Freya Stark, Baghdad Sketches

In the scary stream of the unknown
A deep experience of life awaits.  

Let yourself go.

. . .

From the Amazon description of Baghdad Sketches

In the fall of 1928, Freya Stark, a thirty-five-year-old Englishwoman, set out on her first journey to the Middle East. Bolstered by a command of Arabic, a fair knowledge of Farsi, and an irrepressible drive that would characterize her more than five decades as a traveler and explorer, Stark spent most of the next four years in Iraq and Persia. Stark traveled alone throughout some of the wilder areas of the Middle East at a time when this area was gaining new worldwide importance. For Stark, risk-taking was the essence of a life worth while never hunting out danger for its own sake, she nevertheless viewed her travels as a way of expressing her freedom. Such views make her essays as fresh and startling today as when they were written.