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Books > Sport & Leisure > Travel & holiday > Travel writing > Expeditions
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.
This book focuses on film tourism: the phenomenon of people
visiting locations from popular film or TV series. It is based on a
unique, Asian perspective, encompassing case studies from around
the pan-Asian region, including China, Taiwan, India, Japan, South
Korea, Thailand, Hong Kong, Indonesia, and Singapore. By focusing
emphatically on film tourism in the non-West, this book offers a
timely and crucial contribution to a more comprehensive
understanding of the relation between film, culture and place,
particularly in light of the increased volume of media production
and consumption across Asia, and the consequent film tourism
destinations that are currently popping up across the Asian
continent.
In May 1804, Meriwether Lewis, William Clark, and their Corps of
Discovery set out on a journey of a lifetime to explore and
interpret the American West. The Lewis and Clark Expedition Day by
Day follows this exploration with a daily narrative of their
journey, from its starting point in Illinois in 1804 to its
successful return to St. Louis in September 1806. This accessible
chronicle, presented by Lewis and Clark historian Gary E. Moulton,
depicts each riveting day of the Corps of Discovery's journey.
Drawn from the journals of the two captains and four enlisted men,
this volume recounts personal stories, scientific pursuits, and
geographic challenges, along with vivid descriptions of encounters
with Native peoples and unknown lands and discoveries of new
species of flora and fauna. This modern reference brings the story
of the Lewis and Clark expedition to life in a new way, from the
first hoisting of the sail to the final celebratory dinner.
In British Columbia by the Road, Ben Bradley takes readers on an
unprecedented journey through the history of roads, highways, and
motoring in British Columbia’s Interior, a remote landscape
composed of plateaus and interlocking valleys, soaring mountains
and treacherous passes. Challenging the idea that the automobile
offered travellers the freedom of the road and a view of
unadulterated nature, Bradley shows that boosters, businessmen,
conservationists, and public servants manipulated what drivers and
passengers could and should view from the comfort of their
vehicles. Although cars and roads promised freedom, they offered
drivers a curated view of the landscape that shaped the
province’s image in the eyes of residents and visitors alike.
After a decade of research, author and broadcaster George Edmunds
has finally unlocked the meaning of the mysterious cipher carved
into the famous Shepherd's Monument in the grounds of the
Shugborough Estate, Staffordshire, Lord Anson's ancestral home.
This 300 year old secret is the final link to locating the
multi-million pound Treasure hidden by a Spanish Captain-General.
Lord Anson heard of this treasure through his position as Lord of
the Admiralty and membership of the Royal Society. A secret
expedition met with unforeseen circumstances preventing recovery.
The decoding of the cipher proves Lord Anson's involvement and when
you know the secret, it is obvious that this is what the monument
was for. This revelation also proves the direct link to
Rennes-Le-Chateau in the South of France and its enigmatic
'religious' mystery. A mystery no more. Besides telling the story
of Lord Anson's search for this huge treasure, stories are told of
the unsuccessful treasure hunts that followed. Seemingly unrelated,
these include Cocos Island, Juan Fernandez Island and Oak Island.
All have common DNA connecting them to Lord Anson's expedition.
Also, the enigmatic treasure charts of Captain William Kidd found
before WW2 whilst linked to this story, are shown to be fraudulent.
Changing the narrative of mountaineering books, Sherpa focuses on
the people who live and work on the roof of the world. Amid all the
foreign adventurers that throng to Nepal to scale the world's
highest peaks there exists a small community of mountain people at
the foothills of Himalayas. Sherpa tells their story. It's the
story of endeavour and survival at the roof of the world. It dives
into their culture and tells of their existence at the edge of life
and death. Written by Ankit Babu Adhikari - a writer, social
science researcher and musician - and Pradeep Bashyal - a
journalist with the BBC based in Nepal - Sherpa traces their story
pre- and post-mountaineering revolution, their evolution as
climbing crusaders with previously unpublished stories from the
most notable and incredible Sherpas of the last 50 years. This is
the story of the Sherpas.
`If I could choose a place to die, it would be in the mountains.’
Clouds from Both Sides is the autobiography of Julie Tullis, the
first British woman to climb an 8,000-metre peak – Broad Peak –
and the first to reach the summit of K2, the world’s
second-highest mountain. A truly remarkable woman, Julie describes
her early days in a London disrupted by World War II; her family
life, climbing, teaching and living by the sandstone outcrops of
High Rocks and Harrison’s Rocks in Tunbridge Wells, Kent; and her
experience as a high-level mountaineer and filmmaker. Tullis
demonstrates her determination and self-discipline through training
to black-belt standard in both judo and aikido, and never allows
financial concerns to keep her away from the high mountains – a
place where she felt at peace. Filled with vivid accounts of
frostbite, avalanches, snow blindness and exhilaration alongside
her climbing partner Kurt Diemberger, Clouds from Both Sides takes
us to Yosemite, Nanga Parbat, Everest and K2. First published in
1986 before her death, and with an additional chapter written by
Peter Gillman documenting Tullis’s final, fated expedition to K2,
this story is as relevant and awe inspiring today as it ever was.
Tullis’s achievements are timeless and her attitudes and opinions
far ahead of their time. Clouds from Both Sides is a tribute to the
memory of an inspirational woman determined to strive for her
dreams, an extraordinary account of her adventures and an
exhilarating testament to her courage.
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.
No Place to Fall is Victor Saunders' follow up to his Boardman
Tasker Prize winning debut book Elusive Summits. Covering three
expeditions in Nepal, the Karakoram and the Kumaon, each shares the
exhilaration of attempting new alpine-style routes on terrifyingly
committing mountains. In 1989 Victor Saunders and Steve Sustad
completed a difficult route on the West Face of Makalu II, only to
be brought to a storm-bound halt above 7,000 metres while
descending. Without food or bivouac gear, they endured a tortuous
descent after a night in the open. Two years later the pair were
with a small team in the Hunza valley exploring elusive access to a
giant hidden pillar on the unvisited South-East Face of Ultar, one
of the highest and most shapely of the world's unclimbed peaks. In
1992 Victor Saunders was part of a joint Indian-British team
climbing various peaks in the Panch Chuli range. A happy and
successful expedition narrowly avoided ending in tragedy when
Stephen Venables broke both legs in a fall on the descent from
Panch Chuli V and Chris Bonington survived another fall going to
his aid. The dramatic evacuation of Venables, in which the author
took a major part, forms an exciting climax to a story of
cutting-edge, alpine-style climbing in the world's highest
mountains. No Place to Fall offers enviable mountain exploration,
enriched by sharing the lives of the mountain peoples along the
way. Victor Saunders casts a perceptive, if bemused, eye over his
fellow climbers and reflects on the calculation of risk that drives
them back year after year to chance their lives in high places.
The Next Horizon, the second volume in Chris Bonington's
autobiography after I Chose to Climb, picks up his story from 1962
and relates his subsequent adventures as a mountaineer,
photographer, journalist and expedition leader alongside eminent
climbers including Doug Scott and Don Whillans, throughout an
extraordinary decade of adversity, thrill and discovery. The book
opens with a journey to Chile to climb the Central Tower of Paine.
Bonington then recounts his ascents across the globe; from the Old
Man of Hoy in Scotland, the Eiger in Switzerland, to Sangay in
Ecuador to name but a few. He concludes in the summer of 1972 with
preparations for his ambitious autumn Everest expedition. This
revealing narrative of Chris Bonington's experiences provides an
insight into the charismatic generation of climbing personalities
with whom he travelled, as well as his development into the
celebrity we know today.
Emil Bessels was chief scientist and medical officer on George
Francis Hall's ill-fated American North Pole Expedition of 1871-73
on board the ship Polaris. Bessels' book, translated from the
German in its entirety for the first time, is one of only two
first-hand accounts of the voyage, and it is the only first-hand
account of the experiences of the group which stayed with the ship
after it ran afoul of arctic ice, leaving some of its crew stranded
on an ice floe. Bessels and the others spent a second winter on
shore in Northwest Greenland, where the drifting, disabled ship ran
aground. Hall died suspiciously during the first winter, and
Bessels is widely suspected of having poisoned him. Bill Barr has
uncovered new evidence of a possible motive. Polaris includes
considerable detail which does not appear elsewhere. It is the only
account of the expedition which includes rich scientific
information about anthropology, geology, flora and fauna. It
provides much more information than other accounts on the Greenland
settlements Polaris visited on her way north. Bessels' is the only
published first-hand account of the second wintering of part of the
ship's complement on shore at Polaris House, near Littleton Island,
and of that party's attempt at travelling south by boat until
picked up by the Scottish whaler Ravenscraig. The same applies to
the cruise aboard the whaler, Arctic, after Bessels and his
companions transferred to that ship. Essential reading for
researchers and students of arctic exploration history, this book
is also a compelling read for the interested general reader.
In April 2014 Mark Horrell went on a mountaineering expedition to
Nepal, hoping to climb Lhotse, the fourth-highest mountain in the
world, which shares a base camp and climbing route with Mount
Everest. He dreamed of following in the footsteps of Tenzing Norgay
and Edmund Hillary, by climbing through the infamous ice maze of
the Khumbu Icefall, and he yearned to sleep in the grand
amphitheatre of Everest Base Camp, surrounded by towering peaks. He
was also intrigued by the media publicity surrounding commercial
expeditions to Everest. He wanted to discover for himself whether
it had become the circus that everybody described. But when a
devastating avalanche swept across the Khumbu Icefall, he got more
than he bargained for. Suddenly he found himself witnessing the
greatest natural disaster Everest had ever seen. And that was just
the start. Everest Sherpas came out in protest, issuing a list of
demands to the Government of Nepal. What happened next left his
team shocked, bewildered and fearing for their safety.
When the photographer Enzo Barracco decided to mount a photographic
expedition to Antarctica, inspired by the example of Sir Ernest
Shackleton, he had much more than simple cold to contend with. As
the world's last empty continent, the snowy lands of the South Pole
are a challenge for the most seasoned explorer, with their
merciless winds, treacherous seas and vast sheets of ice. Even to
arrive on the continent itself involves a perilous journey by sea
from southern Argentina through the notoriously rough Drake
Passage. THE NOISE OF ICE: ANTARCTICA explores what drove Barracco
to embark on his journey, and tells the story of the expedition in
words and astonishing photographs, all of them captured during the
trip and many obtained in hazardous conditions. In his gripping
text, Barracco explains how even his journey to Antarctica itself
was undertaken with the essential help of an ice pilot, to spot and
avoid icebergs that ship's radar can miss. He tells of how the
waves on that first journey threw him to the deck and brought home
how hostile such an environment is, and of his constant battle to
protect his photographic equipment and all-important memory cards
from the extreme cold. Most importantly, he explains that in
capturing these beautiful landscapes, his intention is to remind us
all of the precarious position in which this part of the world
finds itself. As the explorer Sir Ranulph Fiennes puts it in his
foreword to THE NOISE OF ICE, "witnessed by only a few, Antarctica
should be enjoyed by many and protected by all".
In April 2012 Mark Horrell travelled to Tibet hoping to become, if
not the first person to climb Mount Everest, at least the first
Karl Pilkington lookalike to do so. He joined a mountaineering
expedition which included an Australian sexagenarian, two Brits
whose idea of hydration meant a box of red wine, and a New
Zealander who enjoyed reminding his teammates of the perils of
altitude sickness and the number of ways they might die on summit
day. The media often write about Mount Everest deaths and how easy
the world's highest mountain has become to climb, but how
accurately does this reflect reality? The Chomolungma Diaries is a
true story of ordinary people climbing Mount Everest with a
commercial expedition, and preparing for the biggest day of their
lives. Imagine your life clipped into a narrow line of cord five
miles above the earth, on the world's most terrifying ridge walk.
This book will bring you just a little bit closer to that
experience.
When Hernan Cortes met the Mayans, Aztecs and other cultures of the
gulf coast of Mexico in 1519, it was the first extended contact
between the peoples of continental America and Europe. The Spanish
found cities larger and better run than any in Europe, and pyramids
greater than Egypt's. The Aztecs believed time was running down and
they lived in the final age of the world. Many Spaniards believed
Christ's millennium was approaching, and God's revelation of
Americas had opened the final act: the conversion of the remote
races of the earth. After the Day of Judgement God's experiment
with man was over. The laboratory, the physical world, would be
destroyed. Both cultures were acting out the last days. Halfway
through researching this book John Harrison had a scan which told
him he would not live to write it; he was seeing out his own days.
The Aztec people were concerned with the transitory nature of
worldly things; some of their rulers were revered as much for their
philosophical poetry as their conquests. John Harrison follows
Cortes's route along the Mexican coast and across country to modern
Mexico City, home of the Aztecs.A journey within journeys to the
end of time, the book becomes a meditation on time, on mortality
and self, from a modern master of travel writing.
'He pulled a cassette out of the glove box and put it in the
stereo, pressed rewind and then play. Was it still 1980 in Memphis?
Some fast-paced blues crackled out of the speakers.'
*************** 'The guide book said it was 'well worth making the
trip to this colourful outdoor market'. It was a market of just
fruit and nothing else. It was time we stopped listening to the
crap guide book recommendations...time to find our own way.'
*************** Dog Days is a lively account of a three-month road
trip that Andrew and his girlfriend Lucy took around the United
States. They drove 15,000 miles around 45 states, by car and
Greyhound bus, known as the 'Dog' by the fearsome locals who ride
it. Follow Andrew and his girlfriend Lucy through landmarks
including Monument Valley and Yellowstone, to a New York Yankees
baseball game, a dude ranch in Montana and a rodeo in Wyoming. More
than just a travel memoir, Dog Days provides vivid descriptions of
the physical landscape, and unravels the characters they
encountered along the way -- with some very candid observations of
America and its people. They began their trip believing they knew a
lot about the country, but quickly discovered just how different
from the rest of the world it really is.
Captain Bungle's Odyssey. Singlehanded Round the World. The author
describes life as a cruising sailor culminating in an attempted to
break the solo circumnavigation record.
The life of Colonel Fawcett is now the subject of the major motion
picture The Lost City of Z. The disappearance of Colonel Fawcett in
the Matto Grosso remains one of the great unsolved mysteries. In
1925, Fawcett was convinced that he had discovered the location of
a lost city; he had set out with two companions, one of whom was
his eldest son, to destination 'Z', never to be heard of again. His
younger son, Brian Fawcett, has compiled this book from letters and
records left by his father, whose last written words to his wife
were: 'You need have no fear of any failure . . .' This is the
thrilling and mysterious account of Fawcett's ten years of travels
in deadly jungles and forests in search of a secret city.
"Finally Fram showed herself in all her glory as the best sea-boat
in the world. It was extraordinary to watch how she behaved. ...
the Fram gave a wriggle of her body and was instantly at the top of
the wave, which slipped under the vessel. Can anyone be surprised
if one gets fond of such a ship?" --Captain Nilsen of the Fram,
1912. From her launch in 1892, to the triumphant return to Norway
in 1914, the polar expeditionary ship Fram sailed north almost to
the North Pole, and south to Antarctica. supporting three of the
most daring of all polar adventures. In the centenary year of Roald
Amundsen's successful trek to the South Pole, this is the story of
his ship, the Fram, and her voyages to the ends of the earth.
Benjamin Leigh Smith discovered and named dozens of islands in the
Arctic but published no account of his pioneering explorations. He
refused public accolades and sent stand-ins to deliver the results
of his work to scientific societies. Yet, the Royal Geographic
Society's Sir Clements R. Markham referred to him as a polar
explorer of the first rank. Travelling to the Arctic islands that
Leigh Smith explored and crisscrossing England to uncover
unpublished journals, diaries, and photographs, archaeologist and
writer P.J. Capelotti details Leigh Smith's five major Arctic
expeditions and places them within the context of the great polar
explorations in the nineteenth century.
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