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She’s also a classical violinist, and it’s her journey to foot-stomping fiddler that forms the heart of this travelogue, in which she roams the Appalachians to unravel a wild region as little understood as the sudden yearning she finds in herself for its rhythms. So, we’ve bundled Max Landerberg’s account of climbing Scotland’s 282 Munros and Alan Brown’s coast-to-coast cycle over the Highlands together. Polish journalist Ryszard Kapuscinski challenges the conventional understanding of some of the modern problems faced throughout Africa in the early 21st century. While there are many stellar examples of guidebooks around, when choosing our favourite travel books we were looking primarily for inspirational reads, not how-to information. While the book ends with Ripley living the good life, it also suggests that paranoia may get the best of him.
If you like this read, you may also want to give Rajesh’s preceding book, Around India in 80 Trains, a read. Having revisited his homeland of Libya in the hope of discovering what happened to his father – disappeared by the Gaddafi regime – Matar now opts for a spot of introspection in medieval Tuscany, driven by a longstanding fascination with the 13-15th century Sienese School of Painting. These are the kind of meals enjoyed in Indonesian homes and will fill your kitchen with the aroma of ginger, tamarind, lemongrass and lime. In a tempo governed by seasons, not days, renovation work, visits to delectable restaurants, and local customs are features of this book that is sure to give you some good laughs.As a former Peace Corps worker and teacher in Africa, Theroux made his way from Cairo to Cape Town whatever way he could – including train, chicken bus, canoe, cattle truck, etc. Part-memoir, and written around 20 years ago, Stranger On A Train captures an America that still feels familiar – albeit with cigarettes in place of smartphones. For those who felt that Michael Palin in North Korea was too short, this day-by-day account provides more detail and context to his two-week journey, as well as the constant behind-the-camera diplomacy that trailed them. Even though we’re starting to explore in real life once more, packing up for beach breaks and city weekends, that hunger is difficult to satisfy.
Lit up by tales of hermits, cults and ‘intraterrestrials’ (who wanted to travel to the Earth’s centre), it’s a book with genuine depth. One of the best travel books for any dreamer, this bestseller is an allegorical novel filled with inspirational quotes that will help you to listen to your heart and follow your dreams. Newby’s prose is sharp and lively throughout, drawing the reader into remote villages and the “spiky and barren-looking” Hindu Kush, where hardships (and a chance hillside encounter with steely adventurer Wilfred Thesiger, who sneers at their air-beds) await.Lauren is sure to motivate you by example to take that leap and chase your dreams no matter what comes your way. Veering north from Yangon to the Burmese Himalaya and down to the jungles of the south, he sees Myanmar flicker to life through the voices of royalty, monks and refugees, to sketch a portrait of a country trapped in the delicate twilight between reality and dreams. With this 1956 telegram – sent by disillusioned London fashion executive Eric Newby to a diplomat friend – begins an engrossing, at times comical, mountaineering journey into Afghanistan. Jonathan spends months in this little-visited area this little-visited area on the continent’s edge to try and secure its survival. Glancey creates 15 little novellas with a fictionalised narrator as the lead character embarking on the classic experiences (as well as five real accounts of his own journeys).
Beyond the stations – in Bonn, Budapest, Belgrade – he hangs out with the locals to find a continent at a crossroads as it processes the shocks of the last 20 years: the Yugoslavian Civil War, the Russian threat and the Syrian exodus – and of course the ‘B’ word.The result is a series of graphic memoirs that brilliantly juggle the subtleties and oddities of being a stranger in a strange town. The Scottish historian has been writing extensively about his homeland and its history for over 30 years, culminating in 2017’s much-garlanded The Hidden Ways: Scotland’s Forgotten Roads, which took him off-the-beaten track to reveal a rich seam of lost local detail. Largely autobiographical, the novel is based on the story of Jack Kerouac and his friends as they travel across the United States.
Interestingly, as the former Python gains an understanding of this alien, secretive country, the since-stalled peace breakthrough by President Trump is reverberating around it. In his latest book, Wanderlust contributing editor, wildlife expert – and the go-to person to ask anything and everything about cetaceans – Mark Carwardine has teamed up with top biologists to present an in-depth (and soon to become indispensable) guide to these creatures of the deep, shedding light on their differences with a set of handy illustrations, migration maps and quick-yet-comprehensive ID guides.It’s a question the adventurer Tim Voors asks himself often on the 4,264km route from Mexico to Canada. But as a quick glance at Horizon’s bookshelf-creaking size reveals, he’s clearly not Just been ruminating on his fundament. His travelogue is a great reminder that sometimes the greatest travel joys are experienced when you least expect it. Guy Stagg, a self-proclaimed non-believer and non-hiker, undertakes the trek as a form of self-healing, following years of coping with depressive thoughts that “stung and reeled”. It’s more a CliffsNotes than a strict guide, but serves up literary tasters and routes to whet the mind.
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