Simon Donlevy was nearly 50 and had worked for a high street bank for 30 years when he embarked on an incredible personal journey. There's something going on! takes us through his candid thoughts and emotions in the periods leading to the decision to take a sabbatical and live the life of a pilgrim as he walks nearly 500 miles along the Camino de Santiago. The magic of the Camino soon reveals itself. He learns that he's never really alone and that he needs nothing else in life other than those he can throw his arms around. What starts as a book about a walk, soon becomes a beautiful story told in an engaging and humorous way about people, love, adventure, escapism, charity and friendships. Join him on his intriquing quest to explore whether there's something going on!

Join Karen as she takes a life-changing trip to the Antarctic which leads to her making an impulsive decision to leave the corporate world behind. As she lives on a Russian base in the Antarctic dealing with angry sea lions, living and working in remote conditions and surrounded by stunning scenery, Karen discovers the courage to find a different way of living her life. With a foreword by polar explorer Robert Swan OBE.

If there's an adventure to be had, it's likely that David Hempleman-Adams has been there first. Ranking alongside Ranulph Fiennes and Chris Bonnington in the pantheon of British explorers, he is the first person in history to achieve what is termed the Adventurers' Grand Slam, by reaching the Geographic and Magnetic North and South Poles as well as climbing the highest peaks on all seven continents. The question Hempleman-Adams is most often asked is, simply: what drives him on? Why risk frostbite pulling a sledge to the North Pole? Why experience the Death Zone on Everest? Why fly in the tiny basket of a precarious balloon across the Atlantic? Is it simply the case that he likes to push himself to the limits, or is there something more to it? No Such Thing as Failure answers these questions and more, uncovering what drives arguably the world's greatest adventurer.

'You will hear it for yourselves, and it will surely fill you with wonder...' In this selection from Marco Polo's famous travel book, the intrepid Venetian describes the customs of India, recounts the story of the king who died eighty-four times and explains how to retrieve diamonds from snake-infested caves... Introducing Little Black Classics: 80 books for Penguin's 80th birthday. Little Black Classics celebrate the huge range and diversity of Penguin Classics, with books from around the world and across many centuries. They take us from a balloon ride over Victorian London to a garden of blossom in Japan, from Tierra del Fuego to 16th-century California and the Russian steppe. Here are stories lyrical and savage; poems epic and intimate; essays satirical and inspirational; and ideas that have shaped the lives of millions. Marco Polo (1254-1324). Polo's Travels are available in Penguin Classics.

A rip-roaring yet intimate biography of the mighty Nile by Robert Twigger, award-winning author of ANGRY WHITE PYJAMAS. 'A tour de force' FINANCIAL TIMES. So much begins on the banks of the Nile: all religion, all life, all stories, the script we write in, the language we speak, the gods, the legends and the names of stars. This mighty river that flows through a quarter of all Africa has been history's most sustained creator. In this dazzling, idiosyncratic journey from ancient times to the Arab Spring, award-winning author Robert Twigger weaves a Nile narrative like no other. As he navigates a meandering course through the history of the world's greatest river, he plucks the most intriguing, colourful and dramatic stories - truly a Nile red in tooth and claw. The result is both an epic journey through the whole sweep of human and pre-human history, and an intimate biography of the curious life of this great river, overflowing with stories of excess, love, passion, splendour and violence.

The first earnest attempt to explore the valley of the upper Yellowstone was made in 1859, by Colonel Raynolds, of the Corps of Engineers. His expedition passed entirely around the Yellowstone basin, but could not penetrate it. Ten years after Colonel Raynoldss unsuccessful attempt to solve the problem of the Yellowstone, a small party under Messrs. Cook and Folsom ascended the river to the lake, and crossed over the divide into the Geyser Basin of the Madison. The general public were indebted for their first knowledge of the marvels of this region to an expedition organized in the summer of 1870 by some of the officials and leading citizens of Montana. In the meantime, a large and thoroughly-organized scientific party, under Dr. F. V. Hayden, U. S. geologist, were making a systematic survey of the region traversed by Colonel Barlow. It is safe to say that no exploring expedition ever had a more interesting field of investigation, or ever studied so many grand, curious and wonderful aspects of nature in so short a time.

Kevan is just one of the guys. It's impossible to know him and not become a little more excited about life. He is an inspiring man permeated by joy, unafraid of sorrow, full of vitality and life! His sense of humor is infectious and so is his story.He grew up, he says, at 'belt-buckle level' and stayed there until Kevan's beloved posse decided to leave his wheelchair at the Atlanta airport, board a plane for France, and have his friends carry him around Europe to accomplish their dream to see the world together! Kevan's beloved posse traveled to Paris, England, and Ireland where, in the climax of their adventure, they scale 600 feet up to the 1,400-year-old monastic fortress of Skellig Michael.In WE CARRY KEVAN the reader sits with Kevan, one head-level above everyone else for the first time in his life and enjoys camaraderie unlike anything most people ever experience. Along the way they encounter the curiosity and beauty of strangers, the human family disarmed by grace, and the constant love of God so rich and beautiful in the company of good friends. WE CARRY KEVAN displays the profound power of friendship and self-sacrifice.

This is the tale of Mark Horrell's not-so-nearly ascent of Gasherbrum in Pakistan, of how one man's boredom and frustration was conquered by a gutsy combination of exhaustion, cowardice, and sheer mountaineering incompetence. He made not one, not two, but three intrepid assaults, some of which got quite a distance beyond Base Camp, and overcame many perilous circumstances along the way. The mountaineer Joe Simpson famously crawled for three days with a broken leg, but did he ever have to read Angels and Demons by Dan Brown while waiting for a weather window? But that's enough about Mark's attempt; there were some talented climbers on the mountain as well, and this story is also about them. How did they get on? Heroes, villains, oddballs and madmen - 8,000m peaks attract them all, and drama, intrigue and cock-ups aplenty were inevitable.

In the spring and summer of 1875, Lt. Col. Richard Irving Dodge escorted the scientific expedition of geologist Walter P. Jenney into the Black Hills of the Dakotas to determine the truth of rumors of gold started by Gen. George Armstrong Custer the previous summer. The five-month trek north from Cheyenne, Wyoming, challenged Dodge's 452 men with their wagons and animals, but in many respects it was ""a delightful picnic (without the ladies),"" as Dodge described it. Colonel Dodge wrote his journals daily in the field, and in their variety, discursiveness, and detail they convey clearly the pleasure he took in what he said was ""the most delightful summer of my life."" Yet he used only a small fraction of what he recorded in his subsequent official communications and published works. If it were not for this well-annotated and illustrated edition by Wayne R. Kime, readers would not have access to Dodge's experiences with such characters as the stowaway Calamity Jane or the eccentric mountain man and backwoods philosopher California Joe, who was hired to guide the expedition. Dodge's particular interests in hunting, fishing, and fine scenery also enliven his narrative, as do the politics dividing the miners from the Indians, and the soldiers from the scientists on the expedition. Black Hills Journals of Colonel Richard Irving Dodge is by far the most detailed account yet available of the conflicting claims, interests, and populations that converged on the Black Hills during the key transitional period before the Great Sioux War of 1876.

The book describes a 21st century journey following the direction taken by anatomically modern humans who left the African nursery around 80000 years ago and reached Australia 20000 years later. Along the way, they laid the genetic foundations for humanity's oldest civilizations - and ultimately inhabited every corner of the globe. The result of these travels is not a scientific treatise. Although the science is not ignored, the centre lies elsewhere. The author undertakes this west-to-east endeavor in the imagined company of his autistic grandson, who serves both as confidant and as a human archetype. This allows the book to verge upon a unique blend of factual travel writing and an almost magical internalised interpretation. What the two travellers find together is a tangle of new experiences and responses, from which the linkages between primeval past and complex present gradually emerge. Here is a work of literary travel writing that describes an enchanted journey through some of the ancient places of the world and into the currently deeply troubled heart of the human adventure. The evidence encountered on the journey suggests that a fundamental universality of humanity's place in the cosmos lies beneath all regional differences and is characterised as much by humility and co-operation as it is by the imperative to survive and/or the will to power. The book does not set out to prove a point, however, but to celebrate the complexity of human responses. It is more a creative work than it is a dissertation with an unambiguous conclusion. Nevertheless, the bibliography gives an indication of some of the sources used, which includes the work of historians, archaeologists, political scientists, biographers and psychologists, as well as authors writing on the various religions of the world.