2024 is the ten year anniversary of the publication of my memoir, Mountain to Mountain. Mountain to Mountain is a first-person journey through the roles that my activism, adventure, motherhood, and sexual assault played in shaping who I am as a woman in my thirties. Through cycling through the remote mountains of the Panjshir Valley, learning to ride a motorcycle on the back roads of Kabul, meeting with women in the Mazar-i-Sharif, Fayrab, and Kandahar prisons, and working to create projects that empower women in a country ranked as one of the worst countries in the world for a woman, I learn the value and cost of having a voice in the world.
“Shannon Galpin's lovely cycling saga is an inspiring and illuminating window into the lives of modern day Afghan women and their continuing struggle to ride their own path to freedom, recognition, and equality.” ―Khaled Hosseini, New York Times bestselling author of The Kite Runner and And The Mountains Echoed
“Mountain to Mountain reads like one of Shannon Galpin's bike rides, fast-paced and unpredictable. It traces her intimate journey as a survivor and her travels across a rugged terrain, in the process bringing alive a vital and poignant message:Equality for Afghan women means more than just voting rights or access to parliament--it means having the same basic freedoms as men.” ―Anand Gopal, author of No Good Men Among the Living