Briefly describe the author. What seems to motivate Salak to undertake these journeys? Support your description with details about her actions, words, and thoughts.

Kira Salak was born in Chicago. She made a career out of writing, and travelling as a journalist. She is famed for engaging in 'high risk' travels in order to report stories.

Salak cited several reasons as the motivational factors which spurred her journeys:

She has discovered that it came naturally to her and she was passionate about it. Towards the end of her life as a teen, she had serendipitously come to the knowledge of how deeply traveling held her fancy. She, while studying abroad, had gotten an Eurail passport (that is a passport that allows one to travel to Europe by rail). She took the opportunity to go through all of Europe by herself. This experience triggered something that changed here for life.

She discovered that unlike the common folk, going to places considered to be high-risk was very natural to her. She is quoted to have said her fear meter of such places is very low. She, for instance, said that she wouldn't give a second thought to jumping on a plane and traveling to West Africa.

She went because of the story. She had traveled countries that were at that time raging with war. When asked if she was not afraid, her response was "I did it for the story". She believed that someone needed to tell the world what was happening in those places. Taking a helicopter view of it all, one could estimate that Salak found purpose in bringing to the world, knowledge about what was happening in places where journalists were usually afraid to go.

Many of her works have been published in reputable magazines such as the New York Times, The Washington Post, and Backpacker.

Cheers!