Fried Eggs With Chopsticks

A travel memoir by the author of the acclaimed KIWIS MIGHT FLY

POLLY EVANS is very cowardly and not at all fond of danger. She does, however, have an unfortunate tendency to seek out discomfort and sometimes even downright pain. It was this ugly trait that led her five years ago to throw in her comfortable office job - complete with its twizzly chair and free use of the coffee machine - and to take off on a leg-battering bicycle tour of Spain. 
The result of her endeavours was one very sore set of limbs and her first book, It's Not About the Tapas, which was short-listed for the WHSmith People's Choice Travel Writing award. She indulged in further escapades the following year, this time swapping pedal-power for a motorbike to travel around New Zealand and to write her second book, Kiwis Might Fly. Polly's third book, Fried Eggs with Chopsticks, tells the story of her sometimes-desperate battle to tour China by public transport, On a Hoof and a Prayer sees her learning to ride horses in Argentina and Mad Dogs and an Englishwoman is about her travels with sled dogs in Canada's frozen north. 
Polly is also an award-winning journalist. When she's not on the road, Polly lives in London.

When she learnt that the Chinese had built enough new roads to circle the equator sixteen times, Polly Evans decided to go and witness for herself the way this vast nation was hurtling into the technological age. But on arriving in China she found the building work wasn't quite finished. 
 
Squeezed up against Buddhist monks, squawking chickens and on one happy occasion a soldier named Hero, Polly clattered along pot-holed tracks from the snow-capped mountains of Shangri-La to the bear-infested jungles of the south. She braved encounters with a sadistic masseur, a ridiculously flexible kung-fu teacher, and a terrified child who screamed at the sight of her. 
 
In quieter moments, Polly contemplated China's long and colourful history - the seven-foot-tall eunuch commander who sailed the globe in search of treasure; the empress that chopped off her rivals' hands and feet and boiled them to make soup - and pondered the bizarre traits of the modern mandarins. And, as she travelled, she attempted to solve the ultimate gastronomic conundrum: just how does one eat a soft-fried egg with chopsticks?

Around New Zealand On Two Big Wheels

Kiwis Might Fly

The second travel memoir by the author of the acclaimed IT'S NOT ABOUT THE TAPAS

When Polly Evans read a survey claiming that the last bastion of masculinity, the real Kiwi bloke, was about to breathe his last, she was seized by a sense of foreboding. Abandoning the London winter she took off on a motorbike for the windswept beaches and golden plains of New Zealand, hoping to root out some examples of this endangered species for posterity. But her challenges didn't stop at the men. 
 
Just weeks after passing her test, Polly rode from Auckland's glitzy Viaduct Basin to the vineyards of Hawkes Bay and on to the Southern Alps. She found wild kiwis in the dead of night, kayaked among dolphins at dawn, and spent an evening on a remote hillside with a sheep-shearing gang. As she travelled, Polly reflected on the Maori warriors who carved their enemies' bones into cutlery, the pioneer family who lived in a tree, and the flamboyant gold miners who lit their pipes with five-pound notes, and wondered how their descendents have become pathologically obsessed with helpfulness and Coronation Street. 
 
The author of the highly acclaimed It's Not About the Tapas reaches some unexpected conclusions about the new New Zealand man - and finds that evolution has taken some unlikely twists.

Mad Dogs And An Englishwoman

Travels with sled dogs in Canada's frozen north.

POLLY EVANS is very cowardly and not at all fond of danger. She does, however, have an unfortunate tendency to seek out discomfort and sometimes even downright pain. It was this ugly trait that led her five years ago to throw in her comfortable office job - complete with its twizzly chair and free use of the coffee machine - and to take off on a leg-battering bicycle tour of Spain. 
 
The result of her endeavours was one very sore set of limbs and her first book, It's Not About the Tapas, which was short-listed for the WHSmith People's Choice Travel Writing award. She indulged in further escapades the following year, this time swapping pedal-power for a motorbike to travel around New Zealand and to write her second book, Kiwis Might Fly. Polly's third book, Fried Eggs with Chopsticks, tells the story of her sometimes-desperate battle to tour China by public transport while On a Hoof and a Prayer sees her learning to ride horses in Argentina. 
 
Polly is also an award-winning journalist. When she's not on the road, Polly lives in London.

In the dead of winter, Polly Evans ventures to the remote Yukon Territory in Canada's far northwest, where temperatures plunge to minus forty and the sun rises for just a few hours each day. Her mission: to learn to drive sled dogs. But when she arrives, she finds there's more to this unspoilt wilderness than deathly cold. 
 
In a pristine landscape patrolled by wolves and caribou, Polly takes her first bruising lessons in the art of mushing. But before the snows melt in spring, she hones her skills and becomes infatuated with this brutal, beautiful land where jagged gems of hoar frost glisten on the spruce boughs and the northern lights weave green and red across the skies. Above all, she discovers a deep affection for the loving, mischievous huskies who with such courage and enthusiasm escort her through the lone white trails of the unforgiving north.

It's Not About The Tapas

A sparky, comic account of the author's solo cycling trip across Spain

This true triumphant tale of her travels will appeal to anyone who's eager for adventure

A hilarious account of her epic adventure around bike-mad Spain

Her adventures are related with an infectious gusto and humour

POLLY EVANS is very cowardly and not at all fond of danger. She does, however, have an unfortunate tendency to seek out discomfort and sometimes even downright pain. It was this ugly trait that led her five years ago to throw in her comfortable office job - complete with its twizzly chair and free use of the coffee machine - and to take off on a leg-battering bicycle tour of Spain. 
The result of her endeavours was one very sore set of limbs and her first book, It's Not About the Tapas, which was short-listed for the WHSmith People's Choice Travel Writing award. She indulged in further escapades the following year, this time swapping pedal-power for a motorbike to travel around New Zealand and to write her second book, Kiwis Might Fly. Polly's third book, Fried Eggs with Chopsticks, tells the story of her sometimes-desperate battle to tour China by public transport while On a Hoof and a Prayer sees her learning to ride horses in Argentina. 
Polly is also an award-winning journalist. When she's not on the road, Polly lives in London.

After working for four years at a leading London book publisher, Polly Evans moved to Hong Kong where she spent many happy hours as a senior editor on the city's biggest entertainment weekly. But fighting deadlines from a twizzly office chair and free use of the coffee machine seemed just too easy. So Polly exchanged the shiny red cabs of Hong Kong for a more demanding form of transport - a bicycle - and set off on a voyage of discovery around Spain. 
 
From the thigh-burning ascents of the Pyrenees to the relentless olive groves of Andalusia, Polly found more adventures that she had bargained for. She survived a nail-biting encounter with a sprightly pig, escaped over-zealous suitors, had her morality questioned by the locals, encountered some dubious aficionados on the road and indulged her love of regional cooking. While she pedalled, Polly pondered some of the more lurid details of Spanish history - the king who collected pickled heads, the queen who toured the country with her husband's mouldering corpse, and the unfortunate duchess who lost her feet. And wherever she cycled, she ate and ate - and yet still she shrank out of her trousers.

Polly Evans

Around Argentina At A Gallop

At the age of thirty-four, Polly Evans finally fulfilled a childhood dream - to learn how to ride a horse. But rather than do so conveniently close to home, she decided to travel to Argentina and saddle up among the gauchos. 
 
Overcoming battered limbs, a steed hell-bent on bolting, and an encounter with the teeth of one very savage dog, Polly cantered through Andean vineyards and galloped beneath snow-capped Patagonian peaks. She survived a hair-raising game of polo and a back-breaking day herding cattle. 
 
Taking a break from riding, she delved into Argentina's tumultuous history: the Europeans' first terrifying acquaintances with the native 'giants'; the sanguinary demise of the early missionaries; and the gruesome drama of Evita's wandering corpse. 
 
On a Hoof and Prayer is the stampeding story of Polly's journey from timorous equestrian novice to wildly whooping cowgirl. It's a tale of ponies, painkillers and peregrinations - not just around present-day Argentina, but also into the country's glorious and turbulent past.

Polly Evans

Books by Polly Evans

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