Simply trying to get your head around Natascha Scott-Stokes' incredible biography can make your head spin. In 1989, she became the first woman to navigate the length of the Amazon alone. Legendary Irish travel writer Dervla Murphy called the resulting book, An Amazon and a Donkey, "a genuine adventure story," - if anyone would know one, it would be Dervla.

Just a few years later, Scott-Stokes cycled across Eastern Europe as the collapse of the Berlin Wall was still echoing in the fields of Poland. She wrote about that in her book The Amber Trail: A journey of discovery by bicycle, from the Baltic Sea to the Aegean. She also wrote a book about Guatemala and a biography of Margaret Fountaine.

More recently, Natascha Scott-Stokes authored a conflicted love-letter to Chile, Tales from the Sharp End, published by the University of New Mexico Press. Part history, part travelogue, part memoir, the stories invite you into the lives of those who inhabit Chile's cities and its hinterland, rich, evocative, and full of that intimate access only the best travel writing brings.

Hear Natascha Scott-Stokes talk about her extraordinary life and captivating work on the Travel Writing Podcast.