The solo trip

She called herself an "incurable traveller" - restlessness was her normal state of being, living on the road a "concentrated image of our existence": Annemarie Schwarzenbach (1908-1942), the Swiss writer and photographer, is considered a pioneer of travel reportage. She usually set off alone to remote regions, driving her sports car through inhospitable mountains. In 1933 she took the Orient Express to Turkey, then drove by car to Lebanon and Israel, and travelled in Iran and Iraq. Schwarzenbach, a highly gifted child from a wealthy Zurich industrialist family, was one of many women who spared no effort to explore the wider world. She recorded her eccentric solo trips in books.