“The original cause of trouble” was when a nine-year-old girl received a copy of Arabian Nights. At least, that’s how Freya Stark would explain her wanderlust more than 30 years later in the preface of her 1934 travelogue, The Valley of the Assassins. Fast forward more than a century later, and another book, this time female explorer Alexandra David-Néel’s My Journey to Lhasa, inspired a different young girl’s adventures to far-flung corners of the globe. That child is now British adventurer Elise Wortley, who’s about to embark on her most…
