The Lost Girls (54 page)

JENNIFER BAGGETT
never dreamed that she'd become a writer, but she's thrilled to have cut her teeth on
The Lost Girls
. Prior to the trip, she worked in marketing and promotions and held positions at the Sundance Channel, VH1, and NBC. She hails from Bowie, Maryland.

HOLLY C. CORBETT
is a freelance writer whose work has appeared in publications such as
Women's Health, Prevention, Seventeen
, and
Fitness
. Her adventures have taken her to all seven continents—she has swum past icebergs in the Antarctic Ocean, slalom water-skied next to alligators in Florida, and hiked the Leaping Tiger Gorge in China. She was born in Syracuse, New York.

AMANDA PRESSNER
caught the travel bug at the age of eight when she and her family traveled cross-country in a camper van nicknamed “The Blue Moose.” Between trips abroad, she writes for such publications as
USA Today, Shape, Travel
+
Leisure
, and
Cosmopolitan
. She is a native of Tampa, Florida.

When they're not traveling the world, all three
LOST GIRLS
live in New York City.

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Disclaimer: When we finished our first draft of
The Lost Girls
, we realized that in order to print it in a typeface you didn't need a magnifying glass to read—and make it light enough to carry on a plane without incurring excess baggage fees—we'd probably have to cut things down a little. And so we set out to streamline our tale, a task that required numerous late-night brainstorming sessions over red wine and sushi and a few workdays when we never changed out of our pajamas at all.

And though we've stuck to the real story of our adventures as closely and accurately as we can recall (cowriters have a wonderful way of keeping you honest!), we occasionally merged characters, reordered events, and condensed time to keep your eyes from glazing over. Many names of people and places (including the Indian ashram) have been changed and some of the identifying details altered to protect the innocent—and not so innocent—but the characters and stories themselves are entirely authentic. We really did bribe our way across the Cambodian border, really did sleep with cockroaches in Kenya, and really did get on a plane together and embark on a journey around the world. The trip turned out to be the greatest adventure of our lives—and that's the most important truth of them all.

But now we'll stop our rambling and let you read about it for yourself.

THE LOST GIRLS
. Copyright © 2010 by Jennifer Baggett, Holly C. Corbett, and Amanda Pressner. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

FIRST EDITION

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Baggett, Jennifer.

The lost girls: three friends, four continents, one unconventional detour around the world / Jennifer Baggett, Holly C. Corbett, and Amanda Pressner.—1st ed.

p. cm.

ISBN 978-0-06-168906-2

1. Baggett, Jennifer—Travel. 2. Corbett, Holly C.—Travel. 3. Pressner, Amanda—Travel. 4. Voyages and travels. 5. Backpacking. 6. Women travelers—Biography. 7. Women adventurers—Biography. 8. Young Women—New York (State)—New York—Biography. 9. Friends—New York (State)—New York—Biography. 10. Travelers' writings, American. I. Title.

G465.B335    2010

910.4'1—dc22

2009054294

EPub Edition © April 2010 ISBN: 978-0-06-199347-3

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

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