THREE TICKETS TO TIMBUKTU

The Journey to Puno, on Lake Titicaca, en route to Bolivia, was truly breathtaking. Our train negotiated hairpin curves and skirted the edges of frightening precipices."" Fortunately, such gaga travel prose, Which tells but does not stop to communicate, is only used sometimes to help cover the enormous distances Mrs. Linker Journeyed through the exotic regions of both hemispheres. An Icelander, she married Hal Linker in 1950 when she was 20 and he was filming a travelogue in Iceland. He was a lecturer and, soon after their marriage, became a television impresario of minor cultures outside of civilization. With the rapid addition of a son, they set off globally to gather material for his TV series. Mrs. Linker, a Nordic beauty (as the colorphotos attest) keeps a thin humus of romance on each page. The Linkers were finally seduced into going to Timbuktu, legendarily the end of the world. In between matrimony and West Africa, however, they traveled up the Amazon, to India, Mozambique, Ethiopia, Angkor Wat, and she liberally sprinkles piranha and scorpions about. The book is sub-titled ""The Global Adventures of America's Most Famous Traveling Family"" which suggests she hopes to replace the Johnsons. It's more optimistic than likely.