Whilst on holiday in Kenya, Corinne Hoffman fell in love with a Masai warrior. Eventually she moved into a tiny shack with him and his mother and spent four years in Kenya. However, slowly but surely, the dream began to crumble. She eventually fled back home with her baby daughter. From wild animals through starvation to ritual mutilation, this is a book steeped in humanity and one that tells a fascinating tale. At once a hopelessly romantic love story and a gripping adventure yarn, The White Masai is a compulsive read.

'An oyster leads a dreadful but exciting life.'

The celebrated American food writer M. F. K. Fisher pays tribute to that most delicate and enigmatic of foods: the oyster. She tells of oysters found in stews and soups, roasted, baked, fried, prepared à la Rockefeller or au naturel and of the pearls sometimes found therein.

As she describes each dish, Fisher recalls her own initiation into the 'strange cold succulence' of raw oysters as a young woman in Marseille and Dijon, and explores both the bivalve's famed aphrodisiac properties and its equally notorious gut-wrenching powers.

Plumbing the 'dreadful but exciting' life of the oyster, Fisher invites readers to share in the comforts and delights that this delicate edible evokes, and enchants us along the way with her characteristically wise and witty prose.

In 1955 the Sultanate of Muscat and Oman, southeast of Saudi Arabia on the Arabian Sea, was a truly medieval Islamic State, shuttered against all progress under the aegis of its traditionalist and autocratic ruler. But it was also nearly the end of an imperial line, for in those days the British Government was still powerful in Arabia. Rumors of subversion and the intrigues of foreign powers mingled with the unsettling smell of oil to propel the sultan on a royal progress across the desert hinterland. It was an historic journey--the first crossing of the Omani desert by motorcar. Jan Morris accompanied His Highness as a professional observer, and was inspired by the experience to write her major work of imperial history, The Pax Britannica Trilogy.

Oliver Sacks, the bestselling author of Awakenings and The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat, is most famous for his studies of the human mind: insightful and beautifully characterized portraits of those experiencing complex neurological conditions. However, he has another scientific passion: the fern . . . Since childhood Oliver has been fascinated by the ability of these primitive plants to survive and adapt in many climates. Oaxaca Journal is the enthralling account of his trip, alongside a group of fellow fern enthusiasts, to the beautiful province of Oaxaca, Mexico. Bringing together Oliver's endless curiosity about natural history and the richness of human culture with his sharp eye for detail, this book is a captivating evocation of a place, its plants, its people, and its myriad wonders. 'Light and fast-moving, unburdened by library research but filled with erudition' - New Yorker

Robert Twigger, poet and travel author, was in search of a new way up England when he stumbled across the Great North Line. From Christchurch on the South Coast to Old Sarum to Stonehenge, to Avebury, to Notgrove barrow, to Meon Hill in the midlands, to Thor's Cave, to Arbor Low stone circle, to Mam Tor, to Ilkley in Yorkshire and its three stone circles and the Swastika Stone, to several forts and camps in Northumberland to Lindisfarne (plus about thirty more sites en route). A single dead straight line following 1 degree 50 West up Britain. No other north-south straight line goes through so many ancient sites of such significance. Was it just a suggestive coincidence or were they built intentionally? Twigger walks the line, which takes him through Birmingham, Halifax and Consett as well as Salisbury Plain, the Peak district, and the Yorkshire moors. With a planning schedule that focused more on reading about shamanism and beat poetry than hardening his feet up, he sets off ever hopeful. He wild-camps along the way, living like a homeless bum, with a heart that starts stifled but ends up soaring with the beauty of life. He sleeps in a prehistoric cave, falls into a river, crosses a 'suicide viaduct' and gets told off by a farmer's wife for trespassing; but in this simple life he finds woven gold. He walks with others and he walks alone, ever alert to the incongruities of the edgelands he is journeying through.

The chronicle of a family's first year alone in Alaskan wilderness, here is a poetic exploration into what we value in life. In 1992 Jean Aspen took her husband, Tom, and their young son to live in Alaska's interior mountains where they built a cabin from logs, hunted for food, and let the vast beauty of the Arctic close around them. Jean had faced Alaska's wilderness alone before in a life-altering experience she shared in Arctic Daughter. Cut off from the rest of the world for more than a year, now her family would discover strength and beauty in their daily lives. They candidly filmed themselves and later produced a companion documentary, ARCTIC SON: Fulfilling the Dream, which shows on PBS stations across the nation. From an encounter with a grizzly bear at arm's length to a challenging six-hundred-mile river passage back to civilization, Arctic Son chronicles fourteen remarkable months alone in the Brooks Range. At once a portrait of courage, a lyrical odyssey, and authentic adventure, this is a family's extraordinary journey into America's last frontier.

'Where is this adventure taking us? I now have no fixed address, don't want one, don't need one. We are floating. Nostalgia for home is vamoose. We have tasted the lotus and we are not going back.' It all began at the Oyster Bar in Grand Central Station, in 1961. Two young Princetonians have returned to New York from South America, where their dream of buying a coffee plantation in the Peruvian jungle evaporated. With the fire for adventure still burning in their veins, they are tempted by a mysterious letter from Kenya and plan a trip across Africa. They buy a white BMW motorcycle and paint the words 'The White Nile' on the tank, to honour the route they will follow. In limpid, elegant prose John Hopkins describes deadly salt flats where tourists vanish without a trace, mysterious Saharan oases and the funerals of young Tunisians killed by the French Foreign Legion. In Leptus Magna he conjures visions of ancient Rome and visits Homer's fabled island of the Lotus Eaters. They escape armed vigilantes in the Tunisian desert, and are chased by the border patrol across Libyan sands. They climb the Great Pyramid at Giza at dawn, endure 'The Desert Express' across the Nubian desert and travel by paddlewheel steamer through the Sudd, a swamp bigger than Britain. But the final adventure, at the idyllic Impala Farm at the foot of Mount Kenya, turns out to be a poisoned paradise. The White Nile Diaries is a riveting coming-of-age journey, a tantalising glimpse into a time when Africa was an oyster for the young, the brave and the free. The places, the people, the writing, and the emotional reverberations hold the reader enthralled.

It took Kinglake seven years before he had finished crafting this `lively, brilliant and rather insolent tale. The physical details of the journey, undertaken in 1834 across the Balkan frontiers of the Ottoman Empire, through Constantinople, Smyrna, Cyprus into the Near eastern cities of Jerusalem, Cairo and Damascus, are never as significant as the conversations, chance encounters and attitudes of the author. Packed full of an infectious charm and a youthful delight at the world, it is above all things funny as it lampoons the pomposity of earnest, middle?aged travellers seeking to establish themselves as professional authorities.

When Peter Hessler went to China in the late 1990s, he expected to spend a couple of peaceful years teaching English in the town of Fuling on the Yangtze River. But what he experienced - the natural beauty, cultural tension, and complex process of understanding that takes place when one is thrust into a radically different society - surpassed anything he could have imagined. Hessler observes firsthand how major events such as the death of Deng Xiaoping, the return of Hong Kong to the mainland, and the controversial consturction of the Three Gorges Dam have affected even the people of a remote town like Fuling. Poignant, thoughtful and utterly compelling, River Town is an unforgettable portrait of a place caught mid-river in time, much like China itself - a country seeking to understand both what it was and what it will one day become.

What was Takako Konishi really doing in North Dakota, and why did she end up dead? Did she get lost and freeze to death, as the police concluded, while searching for the fictional treasure buried in a snowbank at the end of the Coen Brothers' film Fargo? Or was it something else that brought her there: unrequited love, ritual suicide, a meteor shower, a far-flung search for purpose? The seed of an obsession took root in struggling film student Jana Larson when she chanced upon a news bulletin about the case. Over the years and across continents, the material Jana gathered in her search for the real Takako outgrew multiple attempts at screenplays and became this remarkable, genre-bending essay that leans into the space between fact and fiction, life and death, author and subject, reality and delusion.

The Road of Bonesis the story of Russia's greatest road. For over 200 years, the route of the Vladimirka Road has been at the centre of the nation's history, having witnessed everything from the first human footsteps to the rise of Putin and his oil-rich oligarchy. Tsars, wars, famine and wealth: all have crossed and travelled this road, but no-one has ever told its story. In pursuit of the sights, sounds and voices both past and present, Jeremy Poolman travels the Vladimirka. Both epic and intimate, The Road of Bones is a record of his travels - but much more. It looks into the hearts and reveals the histories of those whose lives have been changed by what is known by many as simply The Greatest of Roads. This is a book about life and about death and about the strength of will it takes to celebrate the former while living in the shadow of the latter. Anecdotal and epic, The Road of Bones follows the author's journey along this road, into the past and back again. The book takes as its compass both the voices of history and those of today and draws a map of the cities and steppes of the Russian people's battered but ultimately indefatigable spirit.

'A treasure-trove of inspiration . . . [Beyond the Footpath] shows us how to make the most of the calm beauty of the natural world that surrounds us, as well as offering practical guidance on where to find - and how to travel to - those special places' Raynor Winn, bestselling author of The Salt Path 'Inspirational yet practical. With mindful exercises and tracks to take. Discover the benefits of being a modern pilgrim' Country Living 'A brilliant solution to restoring balance and rediscovering meaning' The Simple Things AN INSPIRING GUIDE TO WALKING MINDFULLY TO PLACES OF MEANING A pilgrimage - long, short, secular or religious - gives you the opportunity to step out of your day-to-day routine and follow a path that promises meaning, a little magic and the space to breathe. Beyond the Footpath will take you on a journey to places of spiritual or personal significance - and show you how to travel in a way that enhances your connection to the world and to yourself. Whether you choose a long-distance trail, an ascent of an awe-inspiring mountain, a walk in an ancient forest, a journey to a temple, stone circle or sacred garden, or simply a lunchtime stroll to somewhere special, Beyond the Footpath has suggestions and tips to inspire you to open the door and walk into a world of wonder.

Professor Augusto Gansser, who died in 2012 aged 101, was a Swiss geologist, researcher and adventurer whose explorations led to new insights about the origins of the great mountain ranges. Early on in his life this modest man began to document his work and life in words, sketches and photographs. His first diary dates back to 1929, the beginning of his career as a geologist. 80 years later, the stock of his diaries and field notebooks is impressive. They tell of the adventurous trip to Eastern Greenland in 1934 when his team of geologists got stranded on the pack-ice for several weeks. They speak of demanding excursions in the Himalayas - barely investigated in the mid-thirties; of his artistry at disguise when he entered Tibet, at the time still closed to foreigners, disguised as a monk to bring back valuable rock samples from the Kailas, the holiest mountain on planet earth. They speak of excursions to Columbia and Trinidad, and the discovery of giant oil deposits as geologist-in-chief under the Shah of Persia. They tell of the friendship with the Bhutanese King's family and their support in allowing him to be the first to map their country. And this book speaks of all these adventures. There is an immense wealth of photos, sketches and field reports in this lavish book. Ursula Markus accompanied her father Augusto Gansser on many trips. As editor she researched the immense image material for the book, and with the well-known journalist Ursula Eichenberger the eventful life of Gansser is described.

Welcome to New Auburn, Wisconsin, where the local vigilante is a farmer's wife armed with a pistol and a Bible, the most senior member of the volunteer fire department is a cross-eyed butcher with one kidney and two ex-wives (both of whom work at the only gas station in town), and the back roads are haunted by the ghosts of children and farmers. Against a backdrop of fires and tangled wrecks, bar fights and smelt feeds, "Population: 485" is a comic and sometimes heartbreaking true tale leavened with quieter meditations on an overlooked America.

"Erika Fatland [is] shaping up to be one of the Nordics' most exciting new travel writers" National Geographic **SHORTLISTED FOR THE STANFORDS DOLMAN TRAVEL BOOK OF THE YEAR 2020** "A hauntingly lyrical meditation to the contingencies of history" Wall Street Journal "[An] impressive mix of history, reportage and travel memoir" Washington Post The Border is a book about Russia and Russian history without its author ever entering Russia itself; a book about being the neighbour of that mighty, expanding empire throughout history. It is a chronicle of the colourful, exciting, tragic and often unbelievable histories of these bordering nations, their cultures, their people, their landscapes. Through her last three documentary books - one about terrorism in Beslan, one about the 2011 terror attacks in Norway and one about post-Soviet Central Asia - social anthropologist Erika Fatland has established herself as a sharp observer and an outstanding interviewer at the forefront of Nordic non-fiction. Translated from the Norwegian by Kari Dickson

The Villa Ariadne is a meditation on the island of Crete, centred on the house built by Sir Arthur Evans, the famous archaeologist of Knossos. Dilys Powell captures the spirit of a place she loved dearly and a group of people she knew well, from local Cretans to the archaeologists Evans and Pendlebury, and the German General Kreipe who was famously kidnapped on the island by Paddy Leigh-Fermor in one of the most audacious actions of World War II. Weaving the myths of the island with its archaeology, ancient history and modern tales, she gives us a loving portrait of this classical land.

This exploration of German identity unfurls as the author journeys through the former German Reich, through the eighteen territories memorialised in the Hall of Liberation. His travels cover present-day Germany and Austria and those regions of Italy, Czech Republic, Poland, Lithuania and Russia which were once German or which remain German-speaking. Geoghegan witnesses a parade of "Schutzen" in Bolzano, an Easter Monday demonstration in Frankfurt and the Festival of the Five-Petalled Rose in Cesky Krumlov. He visits monasteries, fantasy castles, Jewish ghettoes and the remains of the Iron Curtain. He is stopped by "unofficial collaborators" in a wood near Weimar, gets hopelessly lost in Swinoujscie and spends a dismal New Year's Eve in Rudesheim. There are flashbacks to an exchange visit to Dusseldorf as a schoolboy, love affairs and broken engagements, arrests at borders and a search for his Stasi file. Underpinning the contemporary travelogue are cultural-historical observations on the theme of German national identity. The author encounters the patriotic monuments of nineteenth-century Germany and the ruins and surviving fabric of the Third Reich, Fascist Italy and the Communist bloc. He visits the model villages, seaside resorts, occult sites and concentration camps of National Socialism, and engages with cultural figures whose works reflect differing approaches to the idea of Germanness: the paintings of Lucas Cranach and Anselm Kiefer; the music of Richard Wagner and Anton Bruckner; the sculptures of Arno Breker and the architecture of Wilhelm Kreis; and the writings of Eduard Moerike, Bertolt Brecht and Gunter Grass.

Welcome to the favela, welcome to the rainforest, welcome to the real Brazil. This is the Brazil where a factory worker is loyal to his company for decades, only to find out that they knew the product he was making would eventually poison him. This is the Brazil where the mothers of the favela expect their sons to die as victims of the drug trade while still in their teens. This is the Brazil where the women initiated into the old Amazonian tradition of 'baby-pulling' deliver babies in their own time, far away from the drugs and scalpels of the modern hospital. In the company of award-winning journalist Eliane Brum, we meet the individuals struggling to stay afloat in a society riven by inequality and violence, and witness the resilience of spirit and commitment to life that makes Brazil one of the most complicated, most exhilarating places on earth.

Although Wilfred Thesiger is still largely associated with the Arabian deserts and the Marshes of Iraq, he has also travelled extensively at intervals, over the years, among mountains and mountain people in other remote areas of the Middle East and Asia.In 1987 Thesiger wrote: ‘I have always been attracted by mountains…’ And he observed more recently: ‘Had I done nothing else as a traveller except my journeys in Nuristan, these alone would have amounted to something worthwhile’.Eventful, interesting and remarkable achievements in their own right, the Asian journeys – among the Hindu Kush, the Karakorams and the Pamirs – have inspired many of the finest photographs Thesiger has ever taken and contribute significantly to his standing as a great traveller and explorer.Spanning a period of over 30 years (1951-1983) this book draws on Thesiger’s original diaries of his various journeys and his vivid memories of them, and includes some 80 or so previously unpublished photographs of the stunning mountain scenery he saw and the people he encountered.

Home to mythical kingdoms, wars and expeditions, and strange and magical beasts, the Himalayas have always loomed tall in our imagination. Overrun at different times by Buddhism, Taoism, shamanism, Islam and Christianity, they are a grand central station of the world's religions. They are also a plant hunter's paradise, a climber's challenge, and a traveller's dream. In his quest to explore the region's seismic history, Twigger seeks out the Nagas, who helped his grandfather build a camp for Allied soldiers near Imphal during the Second World War and takes the most scenic bike ride in the world from Lhasa to Kathmandu. The result is a sweeping, fascinating and surprising journey through the history of the world's greatest mountain range.

All the best armchair travellers are sceptics. Those of the fourteenth century were no exception: for them, there were lies, damned lies, and Ibn Battutah's India. Born in 1304, Ibn Battutah left his native Tangier as a young scholar of law; over the course of the thirty years that followed he visited most of the known world between Morocco and China. Here Tim Mackintosh-Smith retraces one leg of the Moroccan's journey -- the dizzy ladders and terrifying snakes of his Indian career as a judge and a hermit, courtier and prisoner, ambassador and castaway. From the plains of Hindustan to the plateaux of the Deccan and the lost ports of Malabar, the author reveals an India far off the beaten path of Taj and Raj. Ibn Battutah left India on a snake, stripped to his underpants by pirates; but he took away a treasure of tales as rich as any in the history of travel. Back home they said the treasure was a fake. Mackintosh-Smith proves the sceptics wrong. India is a jewel in the turban of the Prince of Travellers. Here it is, glittering, grotesque but genuine, a fitting ornament for his 700th birthday.

The companion guide to the hysterical television show of the same name, in which Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant force their arrestingly simple pal Karl Pilkington on a global journey ""He'd have been happier in medieval times in a village where you didn't travel beyond the local community." --Stephen Merchant" A cult celebrity due to his role in "The Ricky Gervais Show," the most-downloaded podcast ever, Karl Pilkington has been accused of being a comic creation, so unburdened is he by complex thought--but that is truly just him. The trio's newest project mines Karl massive provinciality: put simply, Karl is not big on traveling. Given the choice, he'll go on vacation to Devon or Wales or, if pushed, eat English food on a package tour of the Mediterranean. So what happened when he was convinced by Gervais and Merchant to go on an epic adventure to see the Seven Wonders of the World? Does travel truly broaden the mind? Find out in Karl Pilkington's hilarious travel diaries.

Recent figures suggest that there will be 1.6 billion arrivals at world airports by the year 2020. "Extreme Pursuits" looks at the new conditions of global travel and the unease, even paranoia, that underlies them---at the opportunities they offer for alternative identities and their oscillation between remembered and anticipated states. Graham Huggan offers a provocative account of what is happening to travel at a time characterized by extremes of social and political instability in which adrenaline-filled travelers appear correspondingly determined to take risks. It includes discussions of the links between tourism and terrorism, of contemporary modes of disaster tourism, and of the writing that derives from these; but it also confirms the existence of more responsible forms of travel/writing that demonstrate awareness of a chronically endangered world.

"Extreme Pursuits" is the first study of its kind to link travel writing explicitly with structural changes in the global tourist industry. The book makes clear that travel writing can no longer take refuge in the classic distinctions (traveler versus tourist, foreigner versus native) on which it previously depended. Such distinctions---which were dubious in the first place---no longer make sense in an increasingly globalized world. Huggan argues accordingly that the category "travel writing" must include experimental ethnography and prose fiction; that it should concern itself with other kinds of travel practices, such as those related to Holocaust deportation and migrant labor; and that it should encompass representations of travelers and "traveling cultures" that appear in popular media, especially TV and film.

Graham Huggan is Professor of Commonwealth and Postcolonial Literatures at the University of Leeds. He is the coauthor, with Patrick Holland, of "Tourists with Typewriters: Critical Reflections on Contemporary Travel Writing" (University of Michigan Press) and coauthor, with Helen Tiffin, of "Postcolonial Ecocriticism" (Routledge).

Illustration: "Shadow Wall," 2006 (c) Shaun Tan.

"A fine piece of work and a great delight."--John McPhee

Christine Jerome decides to repeat the 266-mile Adirondack canoe journey of George Washington Sears (pen name "Nessmuk"), a famous adventure and nature writer for the popular magazine "Forest and Stream" in the late nineteenth century. Part of what made his 1883 journey remarkable was the length of his canoe--a mere nine feet. The "Sairy Gamp" was the lightest of cockleshells, but could navigate rough lakes and stony rapids. Sears could heave it over his head and portage it between lakes for miles. So Jerome has a similar canoe built for herself, and sets off to see what has changed and what has remained on the water trail through the mountains.

The result is a classic of canoe literature: a beautiful paean to journeying silently in light craft. Her nature writing and knowledge of local history lends a depth and substance to every mile. She conjures up Teddy Roosevelt, the Whitneys and Vanderbilts, as well as old hermits and eccentrics. She tells of legendary crimes committed along the lakeshores, while keeping her expert ear tuned for birdsong in the trees.

An unforgettable account of traveling by canoe, and traveling back in time.