Showing titles in Travel Writing & Commentary

By captivating millions during his six-year, 50-country tenure as The New York Times' "Frugal Traveler", Seth Kugel has become one of our most internationally beloved travel writers. While his famously unassuming journeys around the globe have forged a signature philosophy of whimsy and practicality, they have also revealed the seemingly infinite booby traps of on-the-grid tourism. In a book with widespread cultural reverberations, Kugel takes the modern travel industry to task, determined to reignite humanity's age-old sense of adventure.

Here is William Dalrymple's highly praised and greatly entertaining account of his 1986 trip made while a student at Cambridge, which retraced Marco Polo's route across land from Jerusalem to Xanadu. With him, he took a phial of Holy Oil, 600 pounds and Laura until Lahore, and Louisa from there to Xanadu.

Following the hugely popular and successful Around the World in 80 Days and Pole to Pole, Michael Palin set off to meet another challenge: an anti-clockwise circumnavigation of the world's largest ocean, the Pacific.

It's about the globalisation of high culture, the market in taste and the money spent on it. From Las Vegas to Moscow, Dubai to Tokyo and New York to London, Jay Rayner chronicles the revolution in high-end gastronomy that has been sweeping the world since the late eighties. Not simply an account of endless meals in high-end restaurants, it is an exploration of the cities and cultures in which they are found.

Simon Kuper has experienced Paris both as a human being and as a journalist. He has grown middle-aged there, eaten the croissants, seen his wife through life-threatening cancer, taken his children to countless football matches on freezing Saturday mornings in the city's notorious banlieues, and in 2015 lived through two terrorist attacks on their neighbourhood. Over two decades of becoming something of a cantankerous Parisian himself, Kuper has watched the city change.

Tiziano Terzani, sapendo di essere arrivato alla fine del suo percorso, parla al figlio Folco di cos'è stata la sua vita e di cos'è la vita: "Se hai capito qualcosa, la vuoi lasciare lì in un pacchetto", dice. Così, all'Orsigna, sotto un albero a due passi dalla gompa, la sua casetta in stile tibetano, in uno stato d'animo meraviglioso, racconta di tutta una vita trascorsa a viaggiare per il mondo alla ricerca della verità.

Drawing together a fascinating body of writing from over 14 years of work, Figures in a Landscape ranges from profiles of cultural icons (Oliver Sacks, Elizabeth Taylor, Robin Williams) to intimate personal remembrances, from thrilling adventures in Africa to literary writings from Theroux's rich and expansive personal reading. Collectively these pieces offer a fascinating portrait of the author himself, his extraordinary life and his restless and ever-curious mind.

In the best-selling tradition of Bill Bryson and Tony Horwitz, Rinker Buck's The Oregon Trail is a major work of participatory history: an epic account of traveling the entire 2,000-mile length of the Oregon Trail the old-fashioned way, in a covered wagon with a team of mules - which hasn't been done in a century - that also tells the rich history of the trail, the people who made the migration, and its significance to the country.

In Journeys North, legendary trail angel, thru hiker, and former PCTA board member Barney Scout Mann spins a compelling tale of six hikers on the Pacific Crest Trail in 2007 as they walk from Mexico to Canada. This ensemble story unfolds as these half-dozen hikers - including Barney and his wife, Sandy - trod north, slowly forming relationships and revealing their deepest secrets and aspirations. They face a once-in-a-generation drought and early severe winter storms that test their will in this bare-knuckled adventure.

Elemental, fierce, and full of wonder, the Cairngorm mountains are the high and rocky heart of Scotland. To know them would take forever, to love them demands a kind of courageous surrender. In The Hidden Fires, Merryn Glover undertakes that challenge with Nan Shepherd as companion and guiding light. Following in the footsteps and contours of The Living Mountain, she explores the same landscapes and themes as Shepherd's seminal work

For most of 2020, Mikes Dilger’s day-job of travelling to the four corners of the British Isles all but disappeared. Having been confined to one place by the Covid pandemic, and with daily dog walks his sole permitted outdoor pursuit, the simple pleasure of getting to know the flowers at his feet reignited a long-buried botanical passion. Now Mike is on a mission: to see a thousand different wild plants in one calendar year, and assess how our fascinating flora is faring in modern Britain.

After the success of his first book In Search of Greener Grass, Graham Field hits the road again with his bargain-basement KLR650, recording his experiences in his inimitable and revealingly honest diary style. The Caucasus region is often overlooked by travelers, but Graham may inadvertently be about to change all that.

Simon Nye's TV series, The Durrells, is based loosely on Gerald Durrell's Corfu Trilogy and in particular his much-loved best seller, My Family and Other Animals. These books in turn are based somewhat loosely on actual events. The real-life Durrells went to Corfu at the urging of Lawrence Durrell, who was already living on the island with his wife, Nancy Myers. Their intent was to keep the family together as his mother, Louisa, was drinking heavily and recovering from a breakdown.

On January 17, 1913, alone and near starvation, Douglas Mawson, leader of the Australasian Antarctic Expedition, was hauling a sledge to get back to base camp - the dogs were gone. Mawson plunged through a snow bridge, dangling over an abyss by the sledge harness. A line of poetry gave him the will to haul himself back to the surface. On February 8, when he staggered back to base, his features unrecognizable, the first teammate to reach him blurted out, "Which one are you?"

Here, for the first time, is a complete and chronological account: everything from levitating the dog and navigating by smell to meeting his wife Tamsin through the Lonely Hearts column of Time Out and attempting to run away to sea and raise a family on a 27 foot boat.

When Daily Telegraph correspondent Tim Butcher was sent to cover Africa in 2000, he quickly became obsessed with the idea of recreating H. M. Stanley's famous expedition - and travelling alone. Despite warnings that his plan was suicidal, Butcher set out for the Congo's eastern border with just a rucksack and a few thousand dollars hidden in his boots.

Wenn Sie ein Leben voller Freiheit und Abenteuer wollen, dann hören Sie dieses Buch noch heute. Entdecken Sie, wie Sie mit Lars Hartmanns „Ratgeber Wohnmobil“ Ihren Traum vom Reisen und Leben im Wohnmobil verwirklichen können. Treten Sie in die Fußstapfen eines Experten und machen Sie Ihre Wohnmobilreise zu einem unvergesslichen Erlebnis.

On 1 September 2004, Chechen and Ingush militants took more than a thousand people captive at a school in the Caucasus region of southern Russia. Working as a correspondent, Tom Parfitt witnessed the bloody climax in which 314 hostages died, more than half of them children. The experience left Tom emotionally shredded, struggling to find a way to return to his life in Moscow and put to rest the ghosts of the Beslan siege. Having long been fascinated by the mountainous North Caucasus, Tom turned to his love of walking as a source of both recuperation and discovery.

What does it take to be one of the world's best high-altitude mountain climbers? A lot of fundraising; traveling in some of the world's most dangerous countries; enduring cold bivouacs, searing lungs, and a cloudy mind when you can least afford one. It means learning the hard lessons the mountains teach. Steve House built his reputation on ascents throughout the Alps, Canada, Alaska, the Karakoram, and the Himalaya that have expanded possibilities of style, speed, and difficulty.

Sarah Vowell exposes the glorious conundrums of American history and culture with wit, probity, and an irreverent sense of humor. With Assassination Vacation, she takes us on a road trip like no other, a journey to the pit stops of American political murder and through the myriad ways they have been used for fun and profit, for political and cultural advantage.